Foreign Looking Font: Difference between revisions

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{{trope}}
[[File:stupidfont.jpg|link=Aladdin (1992 Disney film)|frame|Because reading Arabic is tricky.]]
 
If a movie or cartoon is set in a particular [[Hollywood History|period]] or [[Hollywood Atlas|region]], sometimes the creator might want to show certain details to the audience through a sign in the background. However, said most of the audience are educated in the English language. So in order to avoid breaking the feel of the setting, the scene might just have English text in written with a [[Useful Notes/Fonts|typeface]] [[As Long as It Sounds Foreign|emulating the writing style of that region]] [[Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe|or period]].
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{{examples}}
== Anime &and Manga ==
* The English-language cover art for ''[[Excel Saga (manga)|Excel Saga]]'', both anime and manga, uses a Japanese-styled font for the title. Bonus points for using actual katakana characters turned Latin characters.
* The kanji in ''[[Black Butler]]'s'' title are written in the style of Old English blackletter calligraphy, reflecting the show's Victorian English setting. (No, really; see its page illustration!)
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** It appeared earlier in the series too. It doesn't even try to look Japanese a lot of the time, it looks like mixed up symbols.
* One scene in ''[[One Piece]]'' had a close up of Luffy's first bounty poster. Oddly, in a world that [[Word of God|speaks English,]] has English signs, and English words ''right on the bounty poster,'' the [[Fine Print]] is nothing but a random assortment of letters and characters.
* Typesetting, one of the major tasks in creating anime [[Fan Sub|fansubs]]s, involves finding or in some cases creating fonts to match onscreen Japanese text, which are then placed over or near the original text.
 
 
== Comic Books ==
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* ''[[Quantum of Solace]]'' used exotic fonts to label each country the story takes place in. [[Maddox]] criticized this use of the trope in his review of it, saying that its use crossed the line into pretentious and implies that [[Viewers are Morons]].
* ''[[Around the World In 80 Days]]'' (2004) has this with all the map fonts throughout (eg, Hindi-style script for the Chyrons in India, etc.).
 
 
== Literature ==
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* The ''[[Thursday Next]]'' series features an ancient prophet who speaks "Old English"... that is, his dialogue is written in Old English font. One character can understand him (as well as the reader, of course), but the rest really do behave as though he were speaking an ancient dialect.
** And then there's the native language of the Book World, which is Courier Bold
 
 
== Live-Action TV ==
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** Justified in-universe, as the TARDIS automatically translates languages, both spoken and written, into the language the companion speaks.
*** Except for Welsh.
 
 
== Music ==
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* [[Type O Negative]]'s ''Dead Again'' album cover uses [[Mock Cyrillic]].
* One of the Chemical Brothers' albums uses an Arabic-styled font.
 
 
== Newspaper Comics ==
* Adolf Kilroy, a tortoise who turned up from time to time in ''[[The Perishers]]'', not only had Hitler's face but spoke in Fraktur.
 
== Video Games ==
 
== Videogames ==
* ''[[Prince of Persia|Prince of Persia 2: The Shadow and the Flame]]''
* A video game of ''The Hunt for Red October'' featured English text in an imitation Cyrillic font.
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* [[Total War]]: Shogun 2 does this for the logo.
 
== Web Comics ==
 
== Webcomics ==
* ''[[Sinfest]]'' renders The Buddha's (very few) spoken lines in a font that mimics Sanskrit.
* The title of Brain Clevinger's ''[[How I Killed Your Master]]'' is written in English, but is easily mistaken for Kanji at first glance.
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== Western Animation ==
* ''[[Aladdin (1992 Disney film)|Aladdin]]'': ''Crazy Hakim's Discount Fertilizer'' is written in Arabic brushstrokes on a sign near a cart of manure near the end of the "One Jump" chase scene.
** The title itself and the opening credits also appear in Foreign Looking Font. No ''real'' Arabic appears in the movie at all, with the possible exception of a sign over Jafar's door; it's either English in a foreign-looking font or random scribbles that look like what Arabic looks like to people who don't speak Arabic. (Arabic Is Just A Bunch Of Scribbles should be a trope.)
* ''[[Hercules (1997 film)||Hercules]]'': The animated series has words written on buildings that are clearly English words made to look Greek.