Dub-Induced Plot Hole: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

 

What is there to do? Why, completely blow it off, of course! Just pretend the last change you made never happened and translate it completely normally. So what if you just took a two by four to the plot? Who cares if your dialogue doesn't make any sense? Send that script out the door, and let the fans deal with it. If you even assume that the fans are [[Viewers are Morons|smart enough]], particularly given [[Animation Age Ghetto|their age]], to notice.

 

{{examples}}

* The former [[Trope Namer]] ''[[Sailor Moon]]'' regularly fell victim to this, which is not surprising given the amounts of censorship and changes usually done to its foreign adaptations.

** One particularly infamous instance, referenced in the page quote, occurs in the first season where Mamoru is brainwashed and falls into an Evil Costume Switch version of his alter ego Endymion. For some reason, the English dub decided to keep his past name the same as his reborn name, which got to be very awkward when he didn't recognize the name "Darien" even though he called himself ''Prince Darien''.

** In the Doom Tree Arc, DiC changed Ali (Allan) and En's (Ann's) backstory so they were affiliated with the Negaverse and knew Queen Beryl (and that it was apparently her who "advised" them to go after Earth), because apparently [[Viewers are Morons]] and couldn't accept that two groups of villains are not affiliated. That makes little sense when we learn their actual backstories, but even before that is headscratching - in episode 49 (43 in the dub), Serena shows Darien some pictures of the battle with Beryl to help him regain his memories... and Ann is right next to them. The fact that this mere earthling knows about her acquaintance/workmate/something doesn't really seem to bother her, or come up when she's trying to uncover Sailor Moon's secret identity.

*** [[Sailor Moon Abridged]] plays with this a bit:

** A smaller example is that in the ''S'' season, [[Dub Name Change|Amara and Michelle]] are always calling Usagi "Serena-moon-face-girl", which is not only a stupid insult but it was long before they actually knew Serena was indeed, [[Sailor Moon]].

*** On a related note, the dub tried very hard to rub [[Hide Your Lesbians|that "cousins" thing]] in the audience's face; they did that by having at least one line per episode announcing that (ex. "Oh, she's my cousin, Michelle"; "They're both girls, and cousins too!"). But at least once Kaolinite was the person spouting said line, which makes no sense as Kaolinite couldn't know Sailor Neptune and Sailor Uranus' identities and, therefore, couldn't know they were related.

** An epic plot hole comes in the English dub of episode 96 ("Lita Borrows Trouble"). Lita is riding in a car with Amara and Michelle and this comes up:

{{quote|'''Lita:''' How'd you guys meet then?

'''Amara: ''' We've been inseparable since we were born. }}

** ...Then comes episode 106 ([[Whole-Episode Flashback|"Related by Destiny"]]), when the two are revealed to be cousins who "grew apart". So much for the "inseparable since we were born", huh.

*** A much worse case is the Russian dub of the ''Stars'' season, where Haruka basically was turned into another Starlight — they gave her a really bad man's voice in civilian form. This, despite the fact that the character was acknowledged as female in ''S'', which was translated by another company. The fact that the change was done to cover up the infamous relationship (left unchanged by the previous translators) is pretty obvious from the dialogue.

** Because the Swedish network Tv4 [[Screwed by the Network|didn't want the audience to be]] [[Viewers are Morons|confused by Japanese songs]], they asked the dubbing company to remove any song - and, when that was impossible, to skip the episode altogether. This led to several plotholes in the ''R'' season, the biggest being the Senshi suddenly knowing all about the Black Moon and Crystal Tokyo because we weren't shown episode 68.

* [[End of Evangelion]] has Misato explain her findings on the Second Impact to Shinji when she transports him to Unit-01, saying how humans were spawned from the progenitor entity Lilith. However, she incorrectly states that Adam was also born from Lilith, where Adam and Lilith were actually unrelated, having been two separate progenitor entities that happened to land on the same planet. It's still no easier to grasp the concept, though.

* In the ''Sonic X'' dub, when Robotnik's base explodes as a result of Chaos Control, Amy asks, "What is that?" leading Knuckles to reply, "It used to be Chaos Control.". In the original Japanese, he just says "Chaos Control...". The original is referring to Chaos Control as the power of the emeralds, but the dub seems to use it as the name of Robotnik's base.

* At the end of the Rescue arc of ''[[Bleach]]'', as the three traitor captains escaped to Hueco Mundo, Gin Ichimaru originally apologised to Rangiku Matsumoto for an unspecified reason. In the dub, this was changed into him saying 'maybe next time'. The apology turns out to be very important to Gin's character motivations in a later arc.

** Before fighting Yumichika, Hisagi tells him "You'll die either way." A few episodes later, he has apparently defeated Yumichika, and when Yumichika insists on resuming the battle, Hisagi tells him he's beaten, and shows no desire to finish him off.

* An odd one occurs in ''[[Case Closed]]'' where [[FUNimation]] inserted a line intended to fix an [[Adaptation-Induced Plothole]] in the original ''[[Detective Conan]]'' anime by having Harley (Heiji) tip Jimmy (Shinichi) off about Vodka and Gin's codenames, which Conan somehow knows in the original Japanese version a few episodes later despite never having a chance to learn this. By adding this line, Harley implies that he knows the truth about Jimmy being Conan. However, this line creates a plot hole in Harley's next appearance where he clearly has no idea that Conan is Jimmy until figuring it out during that case.

* The Disney dub of ''[[The Cat Returns]]'' has a minor one when Haru confronts the messenger cat about the gifts they've been leaving her. "Don't you cats know anything? I hate mice, I don't eat them! I'm allergic to cat-tails, and catnip does nothing for me!" The "allergic" bit appears to be in reference to Haru waking up sneezing that morning, just before discovering the garden is full of cat-tails. However, she is later seen lying in a field of them in the Cat Kingdom with no effects. Worth noting that the sneezing in the manga and the Japanese release is a [[Freeze Sneeze]], as Haru had fallen asleep uncovered.

 

* ''[[Tintin]]'' comics were translated into English out-of-sequence. Translators altered the dialogue to try to give a sense of continuity to the "new" sequence, leading to problems such as characters the heroes already "knew" being introduced. Also, of course, if the books are placed in proper sequence some of the dialogue just doesn't make any sense.

 

* In Russian dub of Robocop, the plot-relevant line "You are fired" ({{spoiler|which leaves the [[Big Bad]] unprotected by the Robocop's directives}}) was translated as, approximately, "You've got burned up".

** With enough imagination you can interpret it as "You've been compromised".

* In ''[[Transformers: Dark of the Moon]]'', a Decepticon attack separates Optimus Prime from his trailer/weapon cache/flight gear. He exasperatedly ''demands'' his flight tech back. In the Hungarian dub, however, he calls for a technician. Yet Que, the Autobot technician, is standing right there! And in the final scene of the movie, {{spoiler|when he tries to offer an alliance,}} Megatron calls Optimus Prime ''Sentinel'' Prime. This change of names isn't only erroneous, translating the dialog word-for-word would've been enough—since in the original, Megatron just says "Prime". The context made it clear which Prime he was referring to... {{spoiler|''not'' the one he had just shot down, but the one he was ''facing''.}}

 

* The Dutch translation of the ''[[Death Gate Cycle]]'' suffered from this. A few added sentences in the later books serve to explain that the characters have simply been using the wrong words. It doesn't help.

* ''[[The Sword of Truth]]'' was translated rather badly to Russian. Here are just the examples from the first book: 1) Kahlan scares away a girl by calmly stating she will "deal" with a certain man she's unaware is her friend. The original has her threatening to ''skin'' him. 2) Denna orders Richard to eat from a bowl without his hands because he's her "pet". Except in the translation, the word used means "disciple" or "trainee". 3) The translation claims that Darken Rahl can use the Magic of Orden to rule ''forever''. There are several places where he states he needs Kahlan to have a ''heir''. And then there is the matter of multiple uncoordinated translators...

* The French translation of the ''[[Warcraft]]'' novel ''[[Rise of the Horde]]'' combines this with Dub Induced Spoilers (even with the [[Foregone Conclusion]]); it is hard to understand why the reveal that warlocks are working with demons is surprising anyone when "warlock" is translated as "demoniste".

 

* The Russian dub of the 2005 season of ''[[Doctor Who]]'' gave the characters generic Russian voices, but retained the line where Rose asks the Doctor about his Northern accent—even though he sounds perfectly normal.

** The French dub is the same.

** Note that the original voices are often heard in Russian dubbing—still, most of the readers wouldn't recognize a Mancunian accent.

** Technically, most of the Russian dubs, even those with full voice replacement, usually keep the references to the original language and its quirks—under the assumption that the viewers would normally know what the original language of the show is (via the show's title screen, for instance). [[Viewers Are Geniuses|That the viewers might not know about said quirks, on the other hand...]]

* The Philippine dub of ''[[Kamen Rider Kabuto]]'' removes a scene in the first episode where a pickpocket just barely misses slashing Tendou's throat with a knife. The rest of the scene is unchanged, so Kagami says "You almost got killed!" apparently out of nowhere.

* In one episode of ''[[King of Queens]]'', Carrie tries to get rid of her accent, in order to get a promotion. Viewers of the German dub are now tempted to ask "What accent?", because she speaks perfect Standard German (,like most people in German dubs do). [[Lucky Translation|Luckily, the episode is salvaged a bit]] by the fact that ''talk'' (the word treated as representative for Carrie's pronunciation problems) is contained in the German [[Gratuitous English|anglicism]] ''Small Talk'', giving somewhat the impression that Carrie's main problem is specifically the pronunciation of such anglicisms.<ref>They even managed to put in a small [[Woolseyism]]: In one scene, Spencer's instructions cause a confused Carrie to pronounce ''talk'' like ''tag''. In the dubbed version, Carrie pronounces it like the similarly spelled German word ''Talk'' ( = ''talc'').</ref>

 

* On the subject of ''[[Sonic the Hedgehog]]'', the decision of early translators to change Sonic's home world from Earth to Mobius probably didn't seem like much of a stretch at the time (many of the levels in the early games looked more surreal that anything you'd find on Earth anyway). Years later, after ''[[Sonic Adventure]]'', Earth started being mentioned by name, humans other than Robotnik/Eggman appeared, and locations took on more realistic elements. Of course, this led to confusion in many fans who grew up with the numerous manuals, comic books, and TV adaptations which placed Sonic on Mobius. Extra lines were also added in ''Sonic Adventure'' to explain "Eggman" as a nickname used by Sonic & Co to make fun of him while Dr. Robotnik was his actual name, though the latter games don't seem to bother with this.

** It's an explanation from the comic, but it can also be applied to the games. When recovering from insanity, Robotnik mentions that he was called Eggman as a tease but he took that name and gave it power, forming the Eggman Empire. This could be referencing [[Sonic Adventure 2]] where he blows up half the moon. Suddenly "Eggman" doesn't seem like much of a joke anymore hm?

* ''[[Fire Emblem]]'', aka ''Rekka no Ken'', is a prequel to ''another'' game that didn't come out over here. In particular, the game ends on what would appear to be an unexplained cliffhanger that was in fact a setup for the plot of the game that came before it.

** In the Japanese version, the Tactician's affinity is determined by bloodtype and birth month while the English merely uses month. This leaves the fact that there are units who are twins with differing affinity bizarre.

* English adaptions of ''[[Bonanza Bros]].''<ref>except for the brothers' ''Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing'' profile, which reverted to the Japanese backstory</ref> claim the [[Villain Protagonist]] thieves are just testing security systems or helping police recover evidence. This doesn't explain why your character appears in prison clothes complete with ball and chain on the game over screen.

* In ''[[Lunar Silver Star Story Complete]]'', Working Designs mistranslated "Mel governs Meribia" as "Mel founded Meribia."

* The American manuals for the NES versions of ''[[Contra]]'' and ''Super C'' (as well as the Game Boy game ''Operation C'') claimed that those games were set in the then-present, while the Japanese versions actually took place in the 27th century. This didn't prove problematic until the opening of ''Contra III'', which clearly established that the game was set in the year 2636. To work around this plot hole, Konami's localization team simply claimed that the main characters in ''Contra III'' were not Bill and Lance, but their descendants Jimbo and Sully.

* The original ''[[Persona (video game)|Persona]]'' hits just about every ''other'' bad translation trope there is, so it's not surprising it gets this one, too. In the Japanese version, the two young girls in the other world are Mai and Aki... so it's not very surprising that they turn out to be aspects of the mind of party member Maki—as Nanjo points out, it's simple wordplay. In the English-language version, they're now Mae and Maggie, and Maki is Mary—so not only does this previously fairly well-foreshadowed twist suddenly come out of nowhere, but Nate (Nanjo) '''still''' gives the explanation that it's simple wordplay even though this no longer makes sense, making him look less "smart and observant" like he's supposed to, and more like a raving lunatic.

* In the original ''[[The Legend of Zelda (video game)|The Legend of Zelda]]'' game, the manual includes the hint that the Pols Voice enemy "hates loud noises". At no point in the localised version of the game does this come into play - it's referencing a trick on the Japanese version, in which Pols Voices could be killed by shouting into the microphone built into the controller. However, when the Famicom was released in the West as the [[Nintendo Entertainment System]], it didn't have the microphone, but the manual was unchanged.

* In the Japanese version of ''[[Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney]]'', Maya's [[Trademark Favorite Food]] is miso ramen. When the game was localized in America, the setting was changed from vaguely Japan to vaguely America, and Maya's [[Trademark Favorite Food]] changed accordingly; she now is a fanatic for hamburgers. For the first three games, this was a fairly harmless change; instead of a favorite ramen stand, they now have a frequented burger joint. The problem came in ''[[Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney]]'', when their favorite ramen stand becomes central to one of the cases and all the characters talk about how much Phoenix and Maya used to visit the ramen stand, making something that was always an element of the Japanese script look like a [[Retcon]] in the English script. So, from now on, new works (like the manga) have her down as loving burgers ''and'' ramen.

** Another one: the ability Iron Fist raises the power of punching moves like Fire Punch, Ice Punch, etc. But many players were surprised by the fact that Sucker Punch doesn't get the boost. This is because Sucker Punch is simply called "Surprise Attack" in the Japanese version, which doesn't imply punching at all. (Which makes sense, considering the large number of armless Pokemon that learn it, such as Spiritomb) Conversly, Meteor Mash DOES get the boost, though its English name doesn't imply it being a punching move (though the animation makes it pretty obvious). It's called Comet Punch in the Japanese version, which had to be changed because the localized version [[Name's the Same|already used that name for another move introduced in an earlier generation.]]

** A slightly lesser example is the move Heat Wave, a Fire move widely available by way of move tutors to Flying Pokémon. The Japanese name for the move is "Hot Wind", which makes more sense, but the discrepancy here isn't all that significant.

** The Japanese version of [[Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire|Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald]] introduced a move called Firefly Light exclusive to the bug-type Pokemon Volbeat, which makes sense. The English translation team called it Tail Glow, making Western fans wonder why Ampharos (an electric Pokemon with a glowing sphere in its tail) can't learn it. And then in [[Pokémon Diamond and Pearl|Diamond/Pearl/Platinum]] the legendary Pokemon Manaphy was able to learn it, which makes sense because it's based on deep-sea animals which typically have bioluminescence as fireflies do, but Western fans were even more puzzled because Manaphy has no tail whatsoever.

* ''Cannon Spike'', an action shooting game featuring numerous [[Capcom]] characters, features an enemy named Fallen Balrog. The name was kept in the overseas versions of the game, despite the fact that he is based on the ''[[Street Fighter II]]'' character known as [[Dub Name Change|Vega]] in the U.S.

* ''Xenoblade X'''s English "translation" changed every English single word already in English and made several pieces of armor with unique models into pallet swaps (if that) or other armor other ones for no reason whatsoever. They didn't bother touching anything that referenced the stuff they changed though, so the game is full of problems like "Reclaimers" being represented by a logo of a stylized T (The original name was "Testament"), some of the music and mission names talking about "Dolls" (which where changed to "Skels"), and thumbnails for armor showing it with its original appearance. Special mention goes to how the [[Fun with Acronyms|BLADE]] organization's meaning to remove "Beyond the Logos", not realizing that's what makes it the '''''Xeno'''blade''.

 

* ''[[Winx Club]]'' was dubbed by 4Kids, and therefore had a few Dub Induced Plot Holes:

** In one episode, [http://www.angelfire.com/la3/goldenroad15/episode36.html Tecna shot a "Sphere of Truth"] at a teacher she thought was evil without any ill effect, but then [http://www.angelfire.com/la3/goldenroad15/episode49.html the teacher turned out to be an evil clone] much later (the very kind of thing her spell was supposed to expose). [[4Kids! Entertainment|4Kids]] never bothered to cover this up at all. It had been originally a plasma sphere, and one can assume that 4K changed it because it was violent. ([http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XDnmqD7Q5Y Here's a video.])

** A rather extreme example: in S3, Icy supposedly gets a new fire power from the season's [[Big Bad]] and boasts about it. Yet just a few minutes later, she attacks Bloom (who has a similar fire power, only more powerful) with nothing but her usual ice attacks. Lather, rinse, repeat ''for the whole season''. So you're thinking that [[They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot|they wasted a perfectly good]] [[Forgotten Phlebotinum|power]], right? But [http://spiderbraids.livejournal.com/56900.html the original version] doesn't have Icy boasting about a new power, and the fire was just there for show, so to speak. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMEowH5X84k Clip.]

** Minor example: An angry [[Shape Shifter|"Stella"]] is looking for "her" ring. Bloom comes in, so "Stella" asks Bloom about it. Her response differs: In the original, Bloom is confused at Stella's sudden anger and says "Calm down okay? Let's sit down and talk"; in the 4Kids dub, she says, "You gave it to me last night; you said to keep an eye on it." In either case, her response is met with an attack; understandable in the original, not so much in the dub. And at the end, "Stella" turns out to be Darcy, who seems more likely to just nicely ask Bloom for the ring than randomly attack her. [http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x4j4q8_winx-club-comparisons-date-with-dis_fun (6:38 in the video)]

* Latin American's Dub of ''[[Gargoyles]]'', [[Superlative Dubbing (Sugar Wiki)|while being really, really good]]; committed one terrible and silly mistake. The gargoyles receive their name in the future, and are named after places of the modern USA (Ex: Bronx). Yet, we see them call themselves BY THOSE NAMES in the flashbacks of the past. Is quite silly seeing someone named Hudson in the year 988 in Scotland.

** Also, "Demona" is called by that name by the other gargoyles, even when they shouldn't have known humans had named her that.

* Hungary's dub of ''[[Kim Possible]]'' suffered from various problems, but the clueless translation was the worst offender. For example, in an early episode, Kim's sitting detention, and one of her mates makes a remark about the nanobot on her nose, thinking it to be a zit. In the dub, he instead asks "You've been busted?", to which the other guy replies "Cheerleaders don't have zits".

* The Japanese dub of ''[[Transformers Animated]]'' renamed Bulkhead "Ironhide" to make him more recognizable to the audience of [[Transformers (film)|the movie]]. This caused a problem when the actual Ironhide appeared in the second season, with an appearance actually based on his [[Transformers Generation 1|G1]] incarnation. The Japanese dub renamed this Ironhide "Armorhide".

** The Hungarian dub doesn't translate the names, but neither does it bother to translate titles (such as "Mare in the Moon"), leading to a very bizarre dub, where the characters seem to be arbitrarily switching between languages. Promo material explains that "The ponies have beautiful English names", but... what sense does ''that'' make?

* The Japanese dub of ''[[South Park]]'' removed the episode "A Ladder to Heaven", probably due to cultural sensitivity. However, like the [[Pokémon (anime)|Legend of Dratini]] example above, this created sort of a problem whenever Cartman would get briefly possessed by Kenny (in the episode, he drank Kenny's ashes after [[I Ate What?|mistaking them for chocolate milk mix]]).

 

{{reflist}}