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{{trope}}
The Japanese does the animation and manghe (Anime and Manga)
==Subpages==
{{subpages}}
* The French dub of ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh]]'' messed up and forgot that Jack, other than being a proper name, is also the face value for a card. This resulted in card names like the Knight of the King, the Knight of the Queen, and the Knight of Jack, whoever that Jack may be.▼
==Other Examples==
▲* The French dub of ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh!]]'' messed up and forgot that Jack, other than being a proper name, is also the face value for a card. This resulted in card names like the Knight of the King, the Knight of the Queen, and the Knight of Jack, whoever that Jack may be.
** There is a Japanese version of one Yu-Gi-Oh episode that translates "Dark Magician" in the subtitles as "Dark Physician."
** In one dub of ''Yu-Gi-Oh'', it translated a line saying "I'm tired of your six decks." into "I'm tired of your sex decks," in Swedish. In Swedish, the difference between 'sex games' ('sexlekar') and 'six decks' ('sex lekar') is a matter of a single space. Even worse, when this was subbed into English, it was subbed as "I'm tired of your sex games," because deck and game are both the same word.
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** In Spain, the Dark Magician Girl became the Dark Magician'''s Daughter''. Even worse considering that {{spoiler|the Dark Magician and the DMG are the [[Reincarnation]] of Ancient Egypt lovers. So they're implying [[Parental Incest]]. Welp.}}
** If you thought the subtitles listed above were bad, this one REALLY takes the cake. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMVPanKol84&list=FLyBFHCNiKTMzWXgdlV_Abbw&index=1&feature=plpp_video "The fiery shooting machine, used on the guarding soldiers!"]
* The epilogue of the ''[[Eyeshield
* Hey look! It's [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yIc6AWASsI&feature=related InuYasha]!
* One of the title translations displayed in the second ''[[
** The title itself ''is'' actually officially translated as "Tetrad' Smerti", and the opening read "Zapiska ''angela'' smerti" (Death angel's note).
** Also in the first live-action movie Naomi Misora gets a comforting [http://img121.imageshack.us/img121/9255/pdvd001h.png letter] from the FBI.
** There's [
* The dub of the ''Garzey's Wing'' features this. Likely the translator just translated it verbatim from Japanese and CPM didn't bother with a script editor. [http://www.animenewsnetwork.
{{quote|"Oh my god! I feel like I just had a dream!!"|"He's just a human. Humans are just human."}}
* ''[[Transformers Armada]]'' and ''[[Transformers Energon]]'' were created on so rushed a schedule as to feature first-draft translations as finalized scripts, and even unfinished animation used for broadcast. Translation errors fly about freely, characters are regularly referred to with the wrong name, there are typos in the ''title cards'', and a hugely disappointing proportion of dialogue, put simply, does ''not make sense''. This is especially problematic in ''Energon,'' in which ''every single episode'' has plot points that are obscured by dialogue that apparently got most of the words but missed the point. Thankfully, their sequel series, ''[[Transformers Cybertron|Cybertron]]'', received a competent localization, appropriately peppered with [[Woolseyism|Woolseyisms]] and other cleverness that, y'know... made sense.
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* A particularly amusing example comes in the official dub of ''[[Getter Robo]] Armageddon'', where the dub could not decide on which giant robot would be known as Getter-2. Tradition and every other source of media has the silver Getter with a drill-arm being known as the Getter-2, but the name was also strangely applied to the rubber-armed and insanely-different-looking yellow Getter-3 as well.
** The dub also had trouble getting the attack names right. One example has Gou using the right name to fire Shin Getter's Getter Beam in the first episode, but the next time he used it, he called it "Fire Ray". Hell, the never said "Open Get" even though that was English to start with. Although, it did give Ryoma some interesting lines.
{{quote|
* The [[Viz Media|Viz]] translation of the ''[[
** [[Manga Entertainment]]'s translation of the OVA had an error involving the post-it notes left by Nenene Sumiregawa for Yomiko, which are seen near the beginning of the first episode. These say things such as "Clean this up. -- Nenene". However, the translators apparently didn't recognize that Nenene was supposed to be a person's name (which is understandable, since she doesn't actually appear on-screen in the OVA), and interpreted it as the question-tag particle "ne" repeated three times. As a result, the on screen translation of this note is "Clean this up! Up! Up!" (and similar things for the other notes).
* Kiseki Films' subtitles for ''[[Super Dimension Fortress Macross|Macross]]: [[The Movie|Do You Remember Love?]]'' completely change the meaning of some lines. For example, the line "We fell into the engine block" became "My engine blocks are angry at me", and the line "He screwed up during an acrobatic maneuver" became "Well... you seem to jump back and forth between subjects like an acrobat".
* Horribly, horribly present in ''[[Hellsing]]''. From the fact that the title comes from 'Helsing,' which is only ever spelled with one 'L' to the fact that British characters have names in Eastern order and opposite gender titles of nobility to, most [[Egregious|egregiously]], the fact that in the official subtitles, a character whose name is [[Sdrawkcab Name|'Dracula' reversed]] is called "Arucard." Because Bram Stoker wrote a book called Dracura, apparently. The original author admitted that he had no idea what he was doing when he wrote the English bits.
** At an anime convention, Taliessin Jaffe (ADR director of the English dub) addressed the "Arucard" issue. They knew "Alucard" was correct, but the Japanese licensors insisted that they use "Arucard" in the subtitles on the grounds that "[[Engrish|it's Dracura backwards]]."
** ''[[
** A Chinese fan nickname for ''Hellsing'' is 《地獄之歌》 ''Diyu zhi Ge'', which is literally "Hell Sing" or "Hell's Song".
* And then there's ''[[Vampire Hunter D]]: Bloodlust'', which transliterates "dhampir" (half-vampire) as "dunpeal". And carries the same mistransliteration into the English version, to the point [[Fan Fiction]] continues using the term...
** The Swedish subtitles for the line "Why did you miss my heart?" translated "miss" as if it was the word for "lacking/wanting" ("I miss you") instead of the word for "not hit".
* [[Invoked]] in ''[[
* The Polish translation of ''[[Sailor Moon]]'', while very good in most parts, had Sailor Venus' "crescent beam" spell translated into "peas and beans", probably because the translator mistook the word "bean" for "beam" and just ran with it.
** "Sailor Saturn" was also mistakenly translated as "Sailor Satan" for two volumes (presumably because both words have an identical pronunciation (Satān) in Japanese).
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*** When Sailor Venus introduces herself to the rest of the Senshi for the first time, one of the girls refers to her as "Sailor Five". While she ''is'' technically the fifth team member introduced, "Sailor Five" is likely a misinterpretation of "Sailor V" via Roman numerals... never mind she was constantly called Sailor V up until that scene.
*** Then there's the infamous ''SuperS'' dub, which appears to have been re-translated from the German RTL2 version, by people who have never seen the previous seasons even dubbed, let alone the original. It not only managed to be [[Inconsistent Dub|inconsistent]], but sometimes got downright crazy, particularly in early episodes. For starters, Super Sailor Moon's response to getting the Kaleidomoon Scope for the first time was something along the lines of [[Translation Train Wreck|"A rope?.. What for?.."]]
*** Another case of a crazy translation happened in episode 144. Tuxedo Mask, whose speeches were always given a somewhat... loose interpretation, ended his introduction by suddenly offering the listeners some "magic powder". Cue fandom jokes about what it could be and whether it could be the reason for such translation quality. [https://web.archive.org/web/20131007101921/http://www.freudsmagicpowder.com/ Really fits it].
*** Yet another case was introduced in episode 165, when Nehellenia was explaining the powers of the Golden Crystal. During that sequence, the "energy of children's dreams" somehow became the "energy of the epitomizer". The last word at least sounds to be English but means absolutely nothing in Russian, and it isn't clear where it came from.
** There were some horrible inconsistencies in the Tokyopop translation of the manga. Sailor Tin Nyanko became Sailor Teen or Sailor Tein, Ptilol became Petite Roll, and at one point, Haruka and Hotaru were referred to as 'Alex Haruka' and 'Jenny Hotaru'. There's no explaining why the Outer Senshi kept their Japanese names while the dub names (Darien, Amy etc.) were used for Mamoru and the Inner Senshi, either.
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*** To be honest, though, a huge part of the name confusion carried over from the original Dragon Ball dub. In detail: most of the names of characters introduced in Z keep their original name, and techniques either get a straight translated name into Italian ("Final Flash" becoming "Lampo Finale") or keep theirs (Big Bang Attack). On the other hand, characters and attacks that got changed in Dragon Ball kept the "adapted" names.
** The Hungarian dub of Dragonball, which was also translated from the French one, had serious consistency issues regarding the name of the Kamehameha. It starts out as "Lifeforce Wave", occasionally becoming "Magical Beam", "Magical Power" and "Great Forces" (yes, in plural). When the character using it DOES shout Kamehameha, the -ha in the end is usually replaced with random shouting. And the worst is when two or more versions are used in the same episode. Also in the Hungarian dub, the Crane Hermit became the Raven Hermit, for no apparent reason. Although in Hungarian, the word for raven sounds more fitting to a villainous old man.
*** Add to this that the weird name changes (Young Satan, Genius Turtle, and the rest) also made it through. When ''[[
*** In the German translation of ''Dragonball'' the Kamehameha was first known as "Shockwave of the Old Ancestors". The syllables of the Kamehameha are extended so much in the original that the words "Schock(KA)welle(ME) der(HA) alten(ME) Ahnen(HA)" fit in quite nicely when the attack was used during fights. When it was merely referenced (and thus spoken much faster) it was usually abbreviated to "Schockwelle".
** The English translation of the 2nd movie was rather odd. While the dub pronounced the [[Big Bad]]'s name as Dr. Willow, the subtitled version calls him Dr. Wheelo. Neither are correct, since the character's name is play on "Uirou", which is a type of Japanese steamed cake from Nagoya. Dr. Uiro's henchmen are named after local Nagoya delicacies (i.e. Dr. Cochin, Kishime, Ebifurya, Misokattsun).
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* [[Zone of the Enders]] anime ''Zone of the Enders: Dolores, i'' suffers from this in the early episodes of the ADV dub and subs. Translations like "Orbital Flame", "Buffram" and "Norman" were found often. Somewhat forgivable in that, by the end of the series, these translation mistakes were fixed. But they ''still'' persist in the opening episodes, so...
* The Swedish Dub of ''[[Cyborg 009]]'' is filled to the brim with these, but sadly none of them are funny enough.
* ''[[
* Toei's official subs for the ''[[Fist of the North Star]]'' TV series has quite a few mistakes (the humongous monster-like fighter called "Devil Rebirth" becomes "Devil Rivers") and odd translation choices (every martial art style and technique mentioned in the series is given a translated name instead of keeping their proper original one, yet all honorifics are kept), but it's a passable translation otherwise (if overly basic).
** The [https://web.archive.org/web/20190711025310/http://
*** Discotek did rerelease it with correct subtitles in 2010.
* Although not an example of English or bootleg subtitles, the choice of words in the Finnish subtitles of the anime ''Final Fantasy: Unlimited'' was quite off rather frequently. A good example is during a pretty serious fight, when a swordsman, according to the subtitles, yells something that roughly translates into 'Have a taste of this sword'. Unfortunately, the phrasing made the request sound completely literal. And yes, the subtitles were official.
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*** The kanji of "Sesshoumaru" literally means 'killing people pill' or 'murdering pill', especially when read in Chinese. The kanji of 'maru' originally meant 'pill' in Chinese, but after the Japanese started incorporating Chinese characters into their language, 'maru' came to mean 'circle', and was often used to end male names back in the day. As for Kikyo, the kanji for her name can be read in several different ways, and "Jugen" is one of them.
** Kouga, in a Chinese bootleg of the Shichinintai arc: "Gewei (Kagome) once was red like flower, now is white like fish belly!"
* A bootleg of ''[[
** A different bootleg had a somewhat less-mangled subtitle quirk involving names. Every name was translated into a un-namelike English word that sounded similar. The best of which were "Sanji" translated as "Sunkist" and "Crocodile" translated as "Clock Dell." Usopp became Liar Bu (understandable, being as the uso in his name means lie) and his father Yasopp was rendered as ''Jesus Bu''.
** There's also one bootleg sub that renamed Zoro "Susan" and in which Luffy's "Gomu Gomu no Pachinko" attack became "Gum Gum Nintendo".
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** Another bootleg of the Sonic OVA also uses "Machine King", and transcribes Tails' name as "Dillus".
** One line in said bootleg has Sonic's yelling "Shut up, Tails!" transcribed as "Dillus, you're too noisy!" While the Japanese word "urusai" (often used to mean "Shut up!") does literally mean "noisy" or "annoying", it doesn't quite have the same meaning as the original line.
* A bootleg of ''[[
** Another bootleg kept changing Nicol's gender from sentence to sentence and misspelling a number of the characters' names in the subtitles.
* There's a store in Melbourne that sells anime DVDs that had Japanese subtitles translated to Chinese and then translated to English. They have never, ever correctly spelled a character name, sometimes just giving up and giving them a random English name instead. Hayate, the male love interest of ''[[Prétear]],'' started out being called Sarah, then Jingje, then finally Hayate. The same DVDs also translated all the male characters as female but kept all references to female characters as female, except for the main character, who was apparently the only male.
** The same thing happened to the characters of ''[[
* There was an ''[[Ask Dr. Rin]]'' subbing (I think of Chinese origin, because it was using Chinese names for everyone) that had Tokiwa call himself a "[[Lovable Sex Maniac]]." Now, ostensibly true as that may be for character description purposes, understanding Japanese, I can definitely say that he was calling himself a "[[Onmyodo|shikigami]] user" instead, which makes a lot more sense.
* There is a bootleg of ''[[
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5V413_i-HGg This Mazinger Z sub]. [[Mazinger Z|Tall Evil God]]. Doctor Hill. Asla. It just... it just keeps going.
** As mazin sounds like majin (demon god) this may explain why Mazinger is translated as Tall Evil God.
** Crabstick. Asia directs the beast king armies of Dr. Hill with its Crabstick.
* In an early episode of the ''[[Ranma
* A hilarous example in the polish translation of ''[[The Slayers]]'' has Death Fog renamed to "Dead Frog".
** An infamous fansub of Slayers Try had Lina uttering the line "the barrier to the Out World has fallen because a beautiful sorcerer defeated Pedroso." (She was explaining to Gourry that the barrier to the outer world had fallen because she defeated Phibrizzo.) The same fansub also referred to Zelgadis as being a "cyborg."
** [[Orichalcum]] also was translated, in both the manga and anime, as "orihalcon", because that is what it literally sounds like; someone didn't know that orichalcum is a word.
* The Filipino voice actors of ''[[Mobile Suit Gundam Wing
** Their dub of ''[[Mobile Fighter G Gundam
** It was improved in ''[[Mobile Suit Gundam SEED
* In the first episode of the English dub of ''Wing'' Zechs Merquise declares "No machine gun for him! Shoot him down!", when he should have said something like "no warning shot".
* Old example: ''[[Dangaioh]]'''s subtitles hilariously mistranslated "Psychic Wave" as ''"Sidekick Wave"''.
* The official English translation of the ''[[
** Early volumes were translated by Rika Takahashi (a veteran translator who used to work for Geneon USA and [http://www.linkedin.com/pub/rika-takahashi/19/82b/2a5 graduated from Stanford]), and later volumes by William Flanaghan.
* The episode summaries on the back of the European releases of ''[[Eureka Seven]]'' seem to have been written by someone whose primary language is not English. Or they forgot to proofread them. The worst ones:
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* An apparently bootleg copy of [[Cowboy Bebop]] managed to phonetically mistranslate a phrase that was already English - the drug "bloody eye" became "BLDI".
** [[Fridge Brilliance]]: BLDI could quite reasonably be an acronym for the drug's scientific name, while "Bloody Eye" is a street name derived from the acronym.
* The otherwise good dub of ''[[
** There's also a massive issue with an untranslatable pun. An entire sequence is devoted to a joke about Bruce Lee that only makes sense if you realize that Bruce Lee's name, pronounced with a heavy Japanese accent, sounds like "Blue Three". The joke goes from there, with characters wondering what happened to Blue One and Blue Two. However, the joke makes absolutely no sense if you directly translate it in to English, which ADV did. Granted, [[Cloudcuckoolander|one of the characters is Osaka]], but Tomo and the others just come off as insane in the clip. The manga got round this by making an equivalent joke about Jean-Claude van Damme.
* The German ''[[
** On the fansub side of things, there's the so far only complete English subs for ''[[
** [[Toei Animation]]'s official English subs for ''[[
*** Also in some of the official subs, when the attack names are being said in Japanese, the English dub names are displayed on the subs. For a particularly egregious example, when Skull Satamon's analysis names his primary attack as "Nail Bone," the subs say "Bone Blaster" - which, incidentally, was the Frontier dub's subsequent rename for the attack, after the 02 dub had retained the original name.
* A fansub of episodes 80-132 of the "Red Jacket" ''[[Lupin III]]'' series features some hilariously bad subtitles. For starters, Zenigata is frequently referred to as "Old Bro/Brother." "Tottsan", Lupin's nickname for Zenigata, is short for otou-san, a slightly playful term for "father." The subtitles often refer to Zenigata as Keibu, which is technically correct, considering that it's the Japanese word for "Inspector." Guest characters in various episodes are often given really bizarre names. For example, Sherlock Holmes III is referred to as "Fuji the Third," and Joe, Jigen's mentor in the use of firearms, is referred to as "God" or "God of the Underworld." Mount Kilimanjaro is translated as "Go there," and the Louvre is translated as "The art museum."
** On a lesser note, the Streamline dub of ''[[The
*** Streamline's Cagliostro dub falls more under [[Macekre]] than Blind Idiot Translation, for various reasons (some legal). And to be fair, Zenigata's given name is not widely known outside the Lupin fandom (it's Kouichi).
* ''[[
* FAR too many [[Fan Sub|fansubs]] and [[Scanlation|scanlations]] to cover here, so they've got their own folder at the end.
* For a show that's set in North America, ''[[Argento Soma]]'' sure has a lot of this going on.
* The Brazilian dub of ''[[
* ''Initial D 4th Stage'' out of Malasia has some particularily horrid examples. The subs appear to be translations of the Chinese dubs, which seem to have been censored to aviod giving people ideas. When Itsuki turbocharges his Levin, a couple of car otakus comment that it has "the part" and when Takumi gets snubbed on Akina, he clearly says ''something'' (my Japanese isn't that good) about "braking," but the sub just says, "That is not an easy opponent." Names can be as-they-sound-in-Japanese, as-the-kanji-sound-if-read-as-Chinese (Takumi ends up being something like "Liagjang"), or transalated into English (Daiki is often "Big Tree"). Then later in the stage Keisuke damages his own car and the team has to get a "shopping car." My personal favorite is when Daiki brings his car into the garage before the battle because, "I need to check the car baker. Lend me some glue."
* The Brazilian dub of ''[[Fate/stay
* Early English fansubs of ''[[
** Not that Kyubey saying that would be incorrect, though. The wish is compensation for becoming a puella magi, {{spoiler|a witch}}, and eventually {{spoiler|a source of energy for Incubators to harvest}}; if Madoka makes it thus that witches can't exist, then there would have not been a reason {{spoiler|for Incubators}} to offer the wish.
* The Dutch sub of Miyazaki's ''[[
* ''[[Super Atragon]]'': The battleship ''Ra'''s Captain Hayate shouts, "ENGAGE!" when issuing "Fire" commands.
** He also refers to the main guns' shells as "Missiles" despite the animation clearly showing they're shells.
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* The Latin American Spanish dub of ''Pokémon'', since season 10. Though mistakes and inconsistences were always made, they usually were ignored due to nostalgia and the generally good quality of the rest of the work. But then bad dub stroke and translationg mistakes and inconsitenses became much more evident (so big I wouldn't encourage listing every single one of them) and many people were turned off by the series. The change of dub company for season 13 seemed to brighten up things a bit, although the translator is using Nintendo of Europe's names for cities and attacks making the new dub something really odd to watch (name conventions between Latin America and Spain are vastly different when it comes to this).
* The brazilian dub of ''Pokémon'' translated String Shot as "Tiro de Estilingue", which means Sling Shot.
* Crunchyroll's English subtitles for ''[[Saki (
* Whoever decided to rename [[
* ''[[Tenchi Muyo!]]'' features an egregious example of bad translation when Kagato is finally killed by Tenchi he says 'I see, Tenchi can't be copied' which makes absolutely no sense and should have been easily caught by any number of people. The line should have been 'I see, regeneration is not possible'. Considering this is an especially important moment because it's how Kagato is defeated it's especially jarring.
* ''[[Deadman Wonderland]]'', one example:
{{quote|
* The original Finnish translation of ''[[
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