Inconsistent Dub: Difference between revisions

 

When a dub uses inconsistent naming or story telling in translation. Usually done either because of poor translation, [[Spell My Name with an "S"|tricky romanization]] or because of [[Executive Meddling]].

 

This often happens in anime where characters practice [[Calling Your Attacks|calling their attacks]], as many anime dubs feature a character who has tons of attacks in its source given all the same name in the dub, or where a single attack gets renamed [[Once an Episode]].

{{quote|'''Kari''': "He is coming back!"

'''T.K''': "As Myotismon? Or Venom Myotismon?"

'''[[Enemy Scan|Digimon Analyser]]''': "Malo Myotismon, the final form of Myotismon (...)" }}

* ''[[Transformers Armada]]'' referred to the giant battleship Decepticon as both Tidal Wave and Shockwave, depending on the episode. That show had more than its share of dub errors, though.

** 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]]s, he is named Givi, a stereotypical Georgian name. Also done in the [[Gag Dub]] of ''[[The Matrix]]'', where Matvey (Morpheus) claims to be travelling aboard an armored train (called KV-1, even though it's a tank) in the vicinity of Berlin, although later he claims to be aboard a submarine.

* 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]].

* The Hungarian dubs of the [[Saw]] movies shift back and borth between using "Kirakós" (Jigsaw) or "Fűrész" (Saw) for the killer. The Hungarian words for jigsaw and saw have no relations, so it comes out of nowhere when the Jigsaw killer is called "Fűrész" (Saw).

== [[Live Action TV]] ==

* The Russian dub of ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'' alternates between three different renderings of the name "Daniel", among other things.

* The first season of ''[[Mighty Morphin Power Rangers]]'' gave some of the weapons and vehicles on the show more than one name. For example, the Dragonzord Fighting Mode ([[Combining Mecha|the Dragonzord/Sabretooth Tiger/Triceratops/Mastondon Zord combination]]) is also referred as the Mega Dragonzord (not to be confused with a different Dino Megazord/Dragonzord combination) and the Dragonzord Battle Mode.

* The European Spanish dub of ''[[Friends]]'' renders [[Kavorka Man|Joey]]'s "How ''you'' doin?" catchphrase a different thing everytime it shows up, which kills the point of a catchphrase on the first place. The same happened with [[Family Matters|Steve Urkel]]'s "Did I do that?".

** ''[[Final Fantasy]]'': The spell Esuna has appeared as Heal and Esna. Holy has appeared as Fade, White, Pearl and Holy. Potions have also been Cure (Potion) and Tonic. Are they Golden Needles or Soft Potions? Remember when Thundara was called Lit2? And who can forget Cactuar/Cactrot/Sabotender, and Coeurl/Cuahl?

*** In the series' defense, the item, spell, and monster names are consistent within a given game. Since none of the games are actually in continuity with each other, this is a borderline case, if that.

** 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]].)

** The most common inconsistency comes in the incantation for the lightning arte ''Indignation''. Whereas the Japanese version retains the incantation across games due to nostalgia, the fact that the various English localisations are rarely produced by the same team means that the incantation is inevitably translated differently each time.

** The Spanish translation of ''[[Tales of Symphonia]]'' changed the names of many skills, enemies and even some characters (Such as [[Our Dwarves Are All the Same|the dwarves]]), but ''[[Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World]]'' used the English terms. In most cases, [[Tropes Are Not Bad|this was a good thing]], since some names were ''too'' imaginative and clashed with the rest of the game. On a negative example (Still on ''Dawn''), [[Arc Words]] "Courage is the magic that turns dreams into reality" was translated literally for 75% of the game, but suddenly changed to "With courage and galantry, any dream can be made true" (Which is not quite the same, mind you) right before the battle against {{spoiler|Brute}}, then kept this way until the [[Final Boss]], where they go back to the first translation.

** More jarring example: Alhazad's gender, which is referred to both as "she" and "fellow". Why is this jarring? Because, not only is Alhazad referred to as a male in both the original's translation and the Japanese version of the remake, but he also constantly makes creepy advances towards a certain female even in his first appearance, which should have been a huge tip-off on his gender from the start.

* ''[[The Legendary Starfy]]'' refers to Shurikit as both a "he" and a "she" at different points in the game. Officially, she's a girl.

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Translation Tropes]]