Inconsistent Dub: Difference between revisions
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** While we're on the subject of ''[[Sailor Moon]]'', the [[By the Power of Greyskull]] and [[Calling Your Attacks]] phrases in the Russian dub are a complete mess. First, the fourth and fifth seasons were dubbed by a different team, which scrapped almost all previous established translations. And even in the first three, they were often translated inconsistently. More weirdness arises when you notice that all ''five'' transformation spells used by Usagi, after going through some translation variations, were set to ''exactly the same phrase''. Talk about logic.
*** Pales in comparison to the Brazilian version. While later seasons were slightly (but only ''slightly'') more consistent, ''[[Sailor Moon]] R'' was a total mess (done by a different studio than the first season) to the point that brazilian fans still make fun of it to this day. Pretty much every single attack name had at least two variants, though mainly the "Moon Princess Halation" attack which had a different name per episode. A favorite was "By the Powers of the Moon Princess' Tiara!". Because her tiara has [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IguHX3hQ4ZU everything to do with the attack].
*** In the first season, the term "Sailor Senshi" was usually translated as "Sailor Guerreiras" (Sailor Warriors). After the [[Uncancelled|Uncancelling]] and studio swap, suddenly they were... "the Sailor Moons" (which made the [[In the Name of the Moon]] speech ridiculously [[Narm
*** While almost every attack in the English dub version of Sailor Moon would have more than one name for a single attack. Sailor Moon's primary attack in the second season Moon Princess Halation is an interesting case. Starting in its first appearance until dub episode 65 it was called Moon Princess Elimination. For the remainder of the R season it was called Moon Scepter Activation (it should be noted that there was a 3 year break before the last 17 episodes of R were dubbed). For the R movie it was Moon Princess Elimination and for its only appearance in the S season it was back to its original dub name.
*** Even the manga has it's moments, most noticeably a page in the Dream Arc. The Outer Senshi kept their names - Haruka, Michiru, Setsuna and Hotaru. While Haruka is playing with Hotaru, she calls her ''Jenny''. This happens only on that one page and never happens again
** The French manga is terrible for this. Attack names are translated differently almost every time (or ''not'' translated as the case may
* In the English dub of ''[[Rurouni Kenshin]]'', the actors inconsistently pronounce the Japanese names of characters and techniques.
* In the English dub of ''[[Naruto]]'', after his battle with Neji, he says that he couldn't graduate because he couldn't master the shadow clone jutsu. What he was supposed to say was just 'clone jutsu', the shadow clone jutsu is a forbidden technique not taught to academy students.
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** Different attacks would also be called the same thing a lot as well. WarGreymon's Terra Force is the giant fireball throw, Great Tornado is his spinning drill attack, Mega Claw is his hack-and-slash technique. The dub called ALL of those attacks Terra Force at some point or another, except when it called Great Tornado Mega Claw.
*** ...which was most of the time. Great Tornado was ''never'' given its merchandise name, so when his [[Evil Twin]], ''Black''WarGreymon, showed up, his Black Tornado attack was no longer named after the attack it was the [[Evil Counterpart]] of.
** In later dubbed series, this occurs ridiculously often between the dub of the television show and the US merchandise - for example, Dynasmon is referred to as Dunasmon in the card game, while Crusadermon retains his original name of LordKnightmon. As of ''[[Digimon Frontier]]'', it's clear that Bandai of America [[They Just Didn't Care|simply stopped caring]] - of all the Digimon introduced in ''Frontier'', absolutely none of them are listed as having the same attacks in the merchandise as they do in the anime, or in the Japanese media for that matter! Then there are the name inconsistencies - aside from the aforementioned Dynasmon and Crusadermon, Bandai also makes mistakes about "Lanamon",<ref>Ranamon in the dub anime and Japanese material</ref>
** In ''Tamers'' and ''Frontier,'' the show writers seemed to be much freer to go their own way with terminology. Characters often get new names and attacks, or retain their Japanese ones, when [[The Merch]] was totally different. This is often seen as a good thing, though - the folks who'd made the trading cards had ''no'' idea what the animators would go on to make the attacks ''do'' when brought to television. Once things were left to the writers, we saw the end of the oddities that came from using the Bandai names sight unseen in season one, such as attacks that could not possibly have been named with the eventual onscreen actions in mind (Twin Fang = Saber Leomon firing ''his hair.'') and seemingly meaningless names that were actually [[Engrish]] for straightforward ones (Kurisarimon = Chrysalimon.) or even [[And the Fandom Rejoiced|keeping the Japanese ones]] where the Bandai merch ones were lackuster or [[They Changed It, Now It Sucks|just different]].
** Ironically, in Japanese episode 33 Blitzmon says "Lightning Topper" when using "Golden Thunder."
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** In ''[[Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha]] A's'', the Belkan intelligent device Graf Eisen has the abilities "Panzer Schild" (armor shield) and "Panzer Hindernis" (armor obstacle), and the intelligent device Laevatein has the ability "Panzer Geist" (armor spirit). Geneon's subtitles translate "panzer" as "tank" for Graf Eisen's abilities, but translate it as "armor" for Laevatein's ability. The fact that there aren't any tanks in this show, and that these are all defensive abilities, might suggest that it should be "armor" (or "armored"; the correct adjective forms would be "gepanzert", "gepanzertes", and "gepanzert", respectively).
* It's not an inconsistent ''dub'' (in fact there isn't a dub at all), but there's contradiction among the subtitles, the [[Eyecatch|eye catches]], and various other things at two whether ''[[Gunbuster]]'' (both the machine and the series itself) is supposed to be two words (Gun Buster), one regular word (Gunbuster), or a CamelCase word (GunBuster).
* The ''[[Ranma ½]]'' manga by Viz ran into this during the "Aging Mushrooms" (called "Mushrooms of Time" in the English version) storyline. After consuming one of the titular items, which make you as old as the mushroom is long (in centimeters,) Ryouga turns into a little 6 year-old kid. Later on, he's fed a
** The ''Hiryuushoutenha'' ("Flying Dragon Ascend-to-Heaven Blast") gets a new translation every time it's [[Calling Your Attacks|called out]].
* The [[Mahou Sensei Negima]] manga had some problems with this, especially in the first few volumes. They're fairly minor for the most part but there are two gratuitous instances: [[Weasel Mascot|Chamo]] is variously referred (by the same characters) as an ermine, rat, weasel, or ferret, before they finally confirmed him as an ermine. Then there was the early incident where Negi's father was referred to as the "Southern Master" for a volume before the translators realized that it makes no sense and switched to the correct "Thousand Master". Fortunately, more recent editions of that volume fixed it.
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** They really couldn't decide on what Nodoka's nickname was either: the early volumes used "Library Girl" or "Librarian" before switching over to the more literal "Bookstore".
** Fortunately, the more recent Omnibus editions of the early volumes fix all of these problems, due to being re-translated by the same people doing the current translations.
* The Dark Horse translation of ''[[School Zone]]'' can't seem to decide whether it should be Yokai, Youkai, or Monster. In the summaries of previous volumes and character bios, they even manage to render it as
* The ''[[Shaman King]]'' Brazilian dub suffered from this in spades; the only attack that got a consistent renaming was Ren's Chuuka Zanmai ("Golden Tower in Action" in the dub), every other had a different name per episode. For example, Yoh's trademark attack (Shinkuu Budda Giri) was called Budda Slash, Budda Attack, Amida Style Attack, Amida Attack, Shinkuu Budda Giri, and "Haaaryyyaaahhhgggh!".
* ''[[Fullmetal Alchemist (manga)|Fullmetal Alchemist]]'' has a joke of sorts wherein characters generally believe that May Chang's pet miniature panda is [[I Am Not Weasel|some kind of cat]]. Some of the English dub episodes had it be correctly identified as a panda, whereas a later episode used the cat confusion.
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* The ''[[One Piece]]'' manga was affected by the 4Kids dub starting up, changing Zoro's name to Zolo. Considering there was also copyright problems with Zorro, it probably would've had to happen eventually, and it's been that way since, making this a relatively minor example.
* The Hungarian dub of ''[[Dragonball Z]]'' had trouble with the name of the Kamehameha, going through at least six different names, including "Lifeforce Wave", "Highest Power", "Magical Force", "Magic Ray", "Personality Beam" and the simple "Lightning", and switching back and forth between them, sometimes within the same episode. Since Hungarian dubs are usually pretty good compared to most, it's possible that this was a quirk carried over from the French dub.
** It probably was, since the Spanish dub is also based on the French one and also has that issue ("Cameame Waves"? "Vital Wave"? "Infinite Light"?). The opposite also happened, with "Vital Wave" (The "normal" name for the Kamehameha) also being used for the [[Dangerous Forbidden Technique|Kikouhou]], the [[Blinded by the Light|Taiyou-ken]], the [[Heroic RROD|Kaioh-ken]], several unnamed ki attacks, and more. The Taiyou-ken (Solar Fist) also went by several names, such as "Solar Beam", "Solar Fist" (Gasp!), "Photoelectric Waves" (Said by [[Idiot Hero|Goku]], go figure) and the crowner, "Final Flash". By Cell. One episode BEFORE Vegeta used the ''real'' Final Flash. Not even the titular [[McGuffin
** The Mexican dub had also its own share of inconcistencies: First, in early episodes, both Pilaf and Shen Long had no name (they were referred to as "The Emperor" and "The Dragon God", respectively), until the Red Ribbon saga when their names were finally said. Uupa on his first appeareance was called Nube (lit. "Cloud") and was a girl; by the next episode he was aptly renamed Uupa and got a gender change. Later, in the Z series, Dr. Gero was strangely called Dr. Maki and after a few episodes he reverted to his Japanese name. But maybe the worst offender is planet Namek, which during the Saiyan and Freezer sagas was named "Planeta Namekusei" ("Planet Planet Namek", in a weird case of Gratuitous Japanese). After the arc had ended the planet got renamed as Planeta Nameku. Also, secondary characters changed voices every now and then.
** In the English version of ''[[Dragonball Z]]'', Piccolo went by the pseudonym "Ma Junior" at the World Martial Arts Tournament, with his reasoning that it was what he used last time he entered the tournament. In the ''[[Dragon Ball]]'' dub, he went by the name "Junior" (No "Ma") instead. Also, in the [[Bowdlerisation|edited version]] of ''[[Dragonball Z Kai]]'' he uses the "Special Beam Cannon" on Raditz, only for it to be the "Makankosappo" in the next episode's flashback. This was averted in the uncut dub in that case, however was later invoked when Goku uses the "Solar Flare" and Krillin does the "Taiyou-ken".
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* The Icelandic translations of Disney comics, while keeping the names of major characters consistent, regularly change the names of all minor characters who only pop up here and there, the different translators seemingly not bothering to check if this character's name has been translated before. This happens now and then in Swedish editions too.
** When [[wikipedia:The Carl Barks Collection|The Carl Barks Collection]] were published in Sweden, exisiting translations were used wherever possible, but the editors did go back and make sure that things like Scrooge's money bin and Number one dime had consistent names throughout.
* The Hebrew translations of the ''[[Tintin]]'' series are inconsistent both within and between albums as to what Captain Haddock is called. This applies to both his
== Film ==
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** The German [[Star Wars]] franchise has some serious problems with consistency. Sometimes english titles like captain and lieutenant are swapped with the german versions, sometimes not. Sometimes Poggle the Lesser is Poggle der Geringere, sometimes not (even within some episodes in The Clone Wars). Sometimes Tarkin is a Grand Moff, but sometimes it gets woolseyisted to Mufti (made up word by a translator). Even the comics, full of a staff of promoted fanboys it is not safe to say if the Home One is Heimat Eins or not. Jango is called with english pronounceiation everywhere except for The Clone Wars where it is Ijangoh.
** Same for the Hungarian translations. Nobody is sure whether the Millenium Falcon's name should be left in English, or if the dubs (there are several) of the Original Trilogy are correct by naming it "Ezeréves Sólyom" ("Thousand Year-Old Falcon"). Light sabers also get to be referred to as "Laser swords" a lot, and although the dubbing studio made an effort to keep the voices and name translations of the Prequels and the cartoon shows consistent, they still switched them around needlessly. The dub of ''[[The Clone Wars]]'', for instance translated the clone nicknames at first, then decided to go with their English names, only Rex is voiced by the "standard" clone voice actor from the movies, and the voices of secondary characters also keep changing depending on the episode.
* Some gag dubs of [[Dmitry Puchkov]] (AKA Goblin) are this way. For example, in the dub of the first ''[[The Lord of the Rings (film)|The Lord of the Rings]]'' film, Gimli is named Gimler (referring to [[Those Wacky Nazis|Heinrich Himmler]]), but in the second and third films' [[Gag Dub
** In case of Gimli's name, it was a retcon. He was given a Georgian accent, and dwarves in general became the [[Fantasy Counterpart Culture]] of the Caucasian republics (much as elves became the counterpart of the Baltic states), so a Georgian name made more sense for him than the name of a Nazi officer. His name was also changed to Givi in the [[Re Cut]] version of ''Fellowship''.
* In Spain, [[Back to The Future|Doc Brown]]'s "1.21 jiggawatts" mispronunciation was kept as "Gigovatios" on the first film, but the third one used the correct "gigavatios". Inversely, the first move calls the [[Applied Phlebotinum|Flux Capacitor]] "Condensador de Fluzo", with "fluzo" being a made-up word. Third movie properly translates it as "flujo", but [[Popcultural Osmosis]] only uses "fluzo", [[Good Bad Translation|probably because it's more associated to the film]].
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* The ''[[Harry Potter]]'' books started out changing "jumper" to "sweater", but quit at some point, creating a strange ambiguity. For all one knew, Lupin actually was intended to be wearing a child's dress, because surely if they meant a warm, woolen pullover which is worn by all sorts of people, they'd say so, as per usual.
** The American editions of the first couple books saw fit to change Dumbledore's fondness for sherbet lemons into a fondness for lemon drops. So in the American edition of the second book, the password to Dumbledore's office becomes "lemon drop". However, "sherbet lemon" was left intact in the fourth book, causing Harry to "remember" the password to Dumbledore's office being "sherbet lemon" despite the fact that that only happened in the British version of the second book.
* An entire book has been written about problems in the Italian translation of ''[[Harry Potter]]''. Some infamous examples of
** In ''Philosopher's Stone'', Terry Boot mantains his original name, in ''Order of the Phoenix'' he becomes "Terry Steeval" (an anglicized version of "stivale", i.e. "boot" in Italian)
** In ''Fantastic Beasts'', the Thestral is called "Testro", in ''Order of the Phoenix'' it's called just Thestral.
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* Italian translations of Tolkien's works suffer the same problem. Examples: orcs are "orchi" in ''[[The Hobbit]]'', "orchetti" in ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]''; Bilbo's sword, Sting, is "Pungiglione" in ''[[The Hobbit]]'', "Pungolo" in ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]''.
** It's a matter of setting things right. The english "orc" is very similar to the italian "orco" ("ogre"), but they indicates different creatures. In the ''[[The Hobbit]]'' translation they used the false relative "orc = orco", while in ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'' they used the right meaning.
** The same can be said for the Hungarian translations. This lead to so much confusion, in fact, that for ''[[The Hobbit]]'', they released a revised translation, integrating the terms popularized by ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'' books. Then, when the ''LOTR'' books received a revision of their own, ''Hobbit'' saw its fourth and (hopefully) final re-translation. [http://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_hobbit#Terminol.C3.B3giai_.C3.B6sszehasonl.C3.ADt.C3.B3_t.C3.A1bl.C3.A1zatok See here] for a comprehensive list of name variations,<ref>
* In [[The Bible]], there is an observance known in the Hebrew text as "Pesach" and the English as "Passover". In the Greek, it's called "pascha", an obvious derivative of the Hebrew word. One time, however, for no apparent reason, "pascha" was translated "Easter" in the King James Version. You don't find this term anywhere else in [[The Bible]], and it doesn't tell you when, why, or how to observe it, or even ''to'' observe it, even if "Easter" was meant, which seems unlikely.
** Christian Bible translations are notorious for [[
* The infamous Swedish translation of ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'' by Åke Ohlmarks couldn't make up its mind whether one place was named Isengard, Isendor or Isendal. The river Entwash was first named "Slamma flod" ("Muddy River"), then "Bukteån" ("Bendy Stream") before finally becoming "Ente älv" ("Ent River").
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** In Spain, Dragon Knights (AKA "Dragoons") seem to change name depending of the game: "Dragon Knight" on ''[[Final Fantasy Tactics Advance]]'' and its sequel, "Dragontino" ("Draconesque", and no, it wasn't "Dragonesque Knight, that would make too much sense) on ''III'' and ''V'', and "Draconius" on ''IV'' (The ''FF'' translator loves [[Gratuitous Latin]]). Curaja can't keep its own name consistent either; the previous spells are always "Cura", "Cura+", and "Cura++", but in ''IV'' it's "[[Rank Inflation|Cura+++]]", in ''I'' "Cura++2" And the crowner, ''III'' changes the entire system to be "Cura, Omnicura, Cura+, Omnicura+" for the hell of it. Thanks for making this simple, Square. Thanks. And we won't even get on how ''VII'' had completely different translations from later games, though that might be forgiven since ''VII'' was a [[Blind Idiot Translation]] from the English version and the others are translated from the Japanese versions.
** Even in English, the translation of "Dragon Knight" was inconsistent for a while, being translated directly in ''[[Final Fantasy IX]]'' and translated as "Lancer" in ''[[Final Fantasy Tactics]]'' and ''[[Final Fantasy V]]'' (Playstation versions of both). Pretty much every other game refers to them as "Dragoons", despite the word "dragoon" meaning something ''very'' different in English normally (and you can blame ''[[Final Fantasy IV]]'' for that one, being the first game in the series to have the class and be translated into English... [[Blind Idiot Translation|sorta]].)
** ''[[Breath of Fire]]'': The first game was translated by Square, the later ones (sometimes very poorly) by Capcom. The goddess Tyr became Myria in her second appearance (the latter is actually correct); recurring character Deis was sometimes called Bleu (Originating with the Square release of the original, and kept as an [[The Artifact|Artifact]] for the Capcom translation of Breath of Fire 2); and Winlan/Windia/Wyndia was supposedly the same place in each game. Gobi/Maniro/Manillo is another
*** A few more that are legitimately Capcom's fault: Baba/Bunyan, Great Tree/Yggdrasil.
** Unusually averted in ''[[Chrono Cross]]'', where Luminaire and the Flea/Slash/Ozzie trio, for instance, were translated the same as in ''[[Chrono Trigger]]''.
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== [[Western Animation]] ==
* A Western example of this sort of thing happens in Ralph Bakshi's animated version of ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]''. The voice actors refer to the character of Saruman as "Aruman" half of the time. This was an originally an intentional change, to make sure the character wouldn't be confused with Sauron, but they flipped between names at random. Also, in spite of Tolkien's detailed notes concerning the pronunciations of certain character names, ''in the book itself'', many of the voice actors pronounced them
* The character Motor Ed of ''[[Kim Possible]]'' has the [[Verbal Tic]] of peppering his sentences with the word "seriously". When translated into Swedish, "seriously" can become two words, both with practically the same meaning: "seriöst" and "allvarligt". For some unknown reason, the dubbers went with having one of the two Motor Ed-centered episodes translating "seriously" to "seriöst" and the other translating "seriously" to "allvarligt".
* Trying to follow the Brazilian ''[[Avatar: The Last Airbender|Avatar]]'' dub is a little harder than it should be thanks to this trope.
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** ''[[Transformers Animated]]'' just very nearly avoided inconsistent dubs. Yes, the show itself never got dubbed, but the single toy commercial that aired on TV and the [[McDonald's]] promo couldn't decide whether to use Marvel names or go with the dreaded ''Energon'' translation.
** Then, ''[[Transformers Armada]]'', Masterfilm's latest attempt to [[Ruined FOREVER|ruin Hungarian TF media forever]]. The dub was made completely independently from its sequels, ''Energon'' and ''Cybertron'', thus had a wholly different voice cast. And despite the live-action movies having made the Marvel names household terms, ''Armada'''s dub still opted to start from scratch, and continued to give new names for each of its characters. What more, this dub has a lot more mix-ups than in the English dubbing, and even the characters themselves don't know whose voice they should be speaking in at times.
** ''[[Transformers Prime]]'''s dub is a step in the right direction, but it again falls flat. On a positive note, for the first time in the dub of a TF animated series, they refer to the Decepticon faction by its original Hungarian Marvel name, and a chunk of the terminology introduced in the movie dubs, heck, even some of the voices (for the first time ever) have also [[Shown Their Work|remained intact]] after the medium-shift. However every other name is left in English. This ''could'' be justified: perhaps they thought toys would sell better if kids learned the names that are on the packagings -- same thing happened to ''[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic|My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic]]'', whose dub is full of English terms, whereas the dubs of the earlier shows translated the names.<br /><br />Problem is, with the two languages being so different, the [[No Pronunciation Guide|pronunciations]] are ''very'' clunky. Had the higher-ups not intervened to keep the translator from using the now-famous [[Dub Name Change|Hungarian names]], this might well have been the first ''aversion''... were it not for the sorry fact that even within the cartoon's own boundaries, inconsistency reared its head in the form of sound editing bloopers regarding Soundwave's synthesized audio snippets and other miscellaneous effects, as well as the varying translations of Ratchet's [[Catch Phrase]]. It also appears that the translator didn't do the research on some less prominent movie trilogy names and terms, and so left a few in English and made up new translations for
* A rather harmless, but interesting example: There is no consistent way to pronounce [[Donald Duck]] in Germany. Early dubs and the first hosts of the TV show ''Disney Club'' pronounced Donald's first name like a german name (you can listen to this pronounciation [http://www.forvo.com/word/donald/#de here]). Sometime in the mid-90s, the dubs of the cartoons and [[Quack Pack]] changed it to the english pronounciation, maybe to sound more modern. Some of the new hosts of ''Disney Club'' changed also to the english pronouciation, but others would keep saying "Donald" the german way. Since the time of [[Mickey Mouse Works]], the dubbers switch all the time between the german and the english prononciation. Well, at least not during the same episode, but some shows say it this way, other cartoons and ads the other. And some fans even insist on pronouncing "Duck" like if it were a German word. But these fans are a [[Vocal Minority]]. *phew*
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