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Too Long; Didn't Dub
- 390 statements
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The practice of not translating certain terms or words because the translator can find no satisfactory equivalent in the target language. This can be because the term is specific to the origin culture, and translation would lose a lot of meaning. Less often, it's just because the two languages use vastly different grammatical terms, which could lead a translation to sound odd, outdated, or just weird. Translation is difficult, after all — it's more art than science, and it's remarkably easy to screw up. This trope tries to resolve this by leaving certain words untranslated, on the assumption that the audience will understand it better that way. This is most common in subtitled works, especially with Anime. Anime has long had issues with Bowdlerized dubs, and fans have sought fan-made alternatives to get a better sense of the original work. Japanese is a particularly tricky language to translate into English, so fansubbers will leave things like honorifics untranslated and assume that the audience will follow. For the most part, that isn't a bad idea; even some official translators will keep the honorifics, because the way characters address each other reveals a lot about their relationships with each other. But where fansubbers fall into this trope is that they greatly expand on things they claim "can't be translated", resulting in things like greetings and stock phrases being left untranslated as well. Whether or not the audience will understand these depends on their level of immersion in the fandom (i.e. how much they use Gratuitous Japanese). It can also be a useful escape if a concept is considered to be too touchy to escape censorship; a Bilingual Bonus may be enough to sneak past the radar, and the fandom will just treat it as jargon (and sometimes consider it a unique, untranslatable concept). Sometimes it can also just be that, given the context of the work, leaving it untranslated just sounds more right—shows about martial arts have a particular tendency to not translate the names of techniques, because it lends them a sense of mystique where a literal translation would just sound dorky. The literal translation of karate is "empty hand", but good luck finding anyone who regularly calls it that. See also Aliens Speaking English, Mascot's Name Goes Unchanged and The Song Remains the Same. Contrast Translate the Loanwords, Too, where the translator translates something which wouldn't need changing. The trope's name is a play on the common Internet phrase Too Long; Didn't Read. |
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| Too Long; Didn't Dub / int_11b7db91 | type |
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Invoked in-universe example in Adventure Time, when Lady Rainicorn tells Jake a joke in Korean that the latter doesn't feel comfortable repeating to his younger brother. | |
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In Kamen Rider Fourze, they refuse to fully translate Gentaro's Catchphrase, subbing "Uchuu kitaaaaaa!" as "Space kitaaaaaa!" instead. It's hard to translate because it's very flexible; depending on context, it can mean "Space time!", "Space is here!", or "Space is awesome!" But while different fansubbers have different translations, they at least try to translate it. TV-Nihon not only refused to, they would also refuse to translate any subsequent appearance of the word "kita," no matter where it is, even when they're not homaging Fourze. It's like a "secret club" mentality, only using Japanese words instead of in-jokes. The worst part is that "uchuu kitaa" isn't even a unique made-up phrase, it's just two normal Japanese words and thus should have been fully translated. | |
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The French science fiction novel Malevil leaves French honorifics untranslated, including religious titles like "Abbé" and "Curé". | |
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The manual of Super Mario Land didn't localize any of the enemy names, though this was rectified in the Virtual Console version (but it was still only a select few). | |
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The World Ends with You takes place in the Shibuya district of Tokyo and leaves a lot of things untranslated to hammer the point home; indie-rock singer 777 says "Domo arigato" a few times, and Ken Doi will welcome you into his ramen shop with "Irasshaimase!" Perhaps most strangely, the ramen varieties are described in Japanese as well with a subsequent translation, such as "Shio Ramen (salty)". | |
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Kamen Rider Wizard has a particularly aggressively Japanese "translation." The Transformation Trinket chatter is left in Japanese, with the kanji for the word written in the middle and the color filling in from right to left as Japanese is read. | |
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The Food Network dub of Iron Chef leaves the honorifics untranslated. It also doesn't dub Chairman Kaga at ALL, instead subtitling his lines. | |
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The original Metroid had the "Maru Mari", whose literal translation was approximately "to make round". This made no sense, so they left it untranslated originally. Later versions called it the "Round Ball". Later Metroid games would give it its current commonly accepted name, the Morph Ball. The remake Metroid: Zero Mission also calls it the Morph Ball, but ports of the original don't change it. | |
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Many English translations of French literature, such as Les Misérables and the works of Alexandre Dumas leave in the monsieur/messieurs, mademoiselle/mesdemoiselles, and madame/mesdames (or at least their abbreviations), instead of translating them into Mr., Mrs., etc. It works well, because other honorifics, such as Monseigneur (which indicates particularly high status) don't translate effectively into English. The practice of leaving titles unaltered is common even in English-language works with foreign (especially French) characters: even if every other male character is called Mister, the Frenchman will be called Monsieur. |
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The Shenmue series is an interesting case. The first game suffered from a notoriously problematic dub, one that directly translated a lot of conversational mannerisms that are typical in Japanese but awkward in English ("I see," "Is that so?") as well as honorifics. The honorifics can be excused, considering it takes place in Japan, but the rest is just a bit awkward. This can't be so easily excused in the sequel, where characters use honorifics despite the game being set in China and Hong Kong rather than Japan. | |
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While Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA games leaving the song subtitles untranslated (only romanized) is standard procedure (with Project DIVA F 2nd being the one notable exception), Project DIVA Future Tune PS4 is notable in that there's a very good reason for this: the game has over 200 songs, a very high song count for a console rhythm game (most have only 50-70 tracks). You try getting the rights to translate 200 songs from a variety of different producers and their record labels, much less translating the lyrics themselves, in a reasonable period of time. | |
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The Wonderful 101 features a wealth of untranslated Japanese names, which are presented in some rather creative transcriptions (more or less phonetic) rather than according to conventional standards of Japanese Romanization. | |
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In Engine Sentai Go-onger, the character Hant is called "Hanto," despite "Hant" being clearly written on the jacket he wears in every episode. | |
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Animaniacs: In the Latin American Spanish dub of the short "I'm Mad", Wakko's line "Gotta use the potty, better stop the car!" is translated into "Tengo que ir al baño para la potty."note "I gotta get to a bathroom soon to use the potty!" This is justified, as the Spanish word for "potty", "orinal", also happens to be the word for "urinal". | |
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In Final Fantasy XIV all of the Samurai attack names are left in Japanese for stylistic reasons, though this has a consequence of making the mouthfuls (their "Midare Setsugekka" skill is the longest attack name in the game) or confusing (all of their spells that spend Kenki start with "Hissatsu" before leading on). This is a pragmatic carry-over of the Japanese version, where the attacks are in kanji while the rest of the skill names are in katakana. | |
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Rhythm Heaven: Manzai Birds in Fever was never put in localized versions simply because the game focuses around dialogue and puns. To compensate this, other versions of the game contain a remake of Mr. Upbeat, an endless game from Tengoku. Unlike Heaven, Fever doesn't have any dubs besides Japanese, English, and Korean. To make up for it, the PAL version contains the ability to switch between Japanese and English on the fly. None of the new Japanese songs in Megamix have English versions, and if the game is set to English instrumentals play in place of the lyrics. Thankfully, if the audio is set to Japanese the original versions can still be heard even in the localization, though the game won't display any info about them. |
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Kaijin no Soki, in Tatsunoko vs. Capcom: Ultimate All-Stars, although previous promotional videos for Tatsunoko vs. Capcom: Cross Generation of Heroes had shown his name as Souki. Probably to avoid confusion with Saki Omokane from Quiz Nanairo Dreams, who is listed as just "Saki." | |
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In the Monster Rancher series, the name of the Suzurin monster species is a Japanese pun regarding the monster's appearance and Japanese history. The dubbers probably couldn't think up a good alternative name that kept the same feeling, so they left it as it was for the English version. | |
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Most foreign dubs of the Despicable Me movies leave the word "minion" in English, with the result that the term is thought to be a species name, rather than a generic word meaning "henchman". This worked out surprisingly well in hindsight, since the spinoff revealed it really is their species name. | |
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.hack//G.U. has two untranslated attack names: Rengeki ("chain attack") and Hangeki ("counter-attack"). Even stranger, in Vol. 1's localized version, Haseo will yell out "Rengeki!" even when performing Hangeki, causing further confusion. | |
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Dungeons & Dragons 3.0-3.5 has dozens of books; only the 3.0 Player's Handbook was translated into Turkish. The only half-decent parts of it used Arabic and Persian words to emulate Latin's "mystic" feel in English. This only succeeded in replacing a bunch of words the readers didn't know with another bunch of words the readers didn't know. In other sources, things as simple as weapon names are translated very inconsistently. As a result, most Game Masters in Turkey pepper their games generously with English words. As most gamers pick up a lot of those words from computer games, it's not much of a problem. | |
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A western example: this trope is a big part of why the makers of The Sims came up with the made-up "Simlish" language for its characters. Recording countless lines of specific, context-appropriate dialogue for an extremely open-ended and freeform game built heavily around social interactions would've been hard enough in one language, and translating all that dialogue into every language the game was published in would've been a nightmare. | |
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Gekiranger becomes very hard to follow because of this trope. Some important things are discussed only in untranslated Japanese terms, and what is and isn't translated seems to be random. The same problem pops up in Shinkenger, but rather than failing to translate attack names, here they fail to translate the first part of the morph phrases, apparently because they rhyme. They value this fact over actually being able to understand what the characters are talking about. Gekiranger is a Chinese-influenced Sentai, so there are a lot of obviously Japan-ified Chinese terms. Despite how strange they sound, TV-Nihon refuses to translate them, which leads to episode titles like Gowagowan no Daindain: JyuKen KyoJin, kenzan!◊ And no, that is not the longest string of untranslated Japanese in a TV-N sub. Raised by Wolves hero Jan's use of Japanese onomatopoeia (along the lines of Hulk Speak or Buffy Speak) is left untranslated, without any indication as to what it is. Viewers are left to believe he's just making up words. |
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The Finnish dub and subtitles of Kung Fu Panda leaves Mantis to be called Mantis, just with a Finnish pronunciation, possibly because a literal translation of the name would be too big a mouthful, with six syllables in place of two.note Rukoilijasirkka, praying mantis. There's no Finnish word for just "mantis" without the "praying" part, because the second part of the Finnish word alone by itself would just mean cricket, or generically everything from locusts to stick insects. | |
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Whole games in South Korea would be released entirely in English during the country's ban on Japanese products. Many games distributed there were just repackaged American versions, and Korean distributors wouldn't bother translating anything other than the box blurbs and the manual. This would also occasionally happen with Japanese versions, too, such as with The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures. Nintendo games wouldn't be fully translated into Korean until Nintendo of Korea was formed in 2007. | |
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Representative dialogue from Aoi Shiro: "Momo-chan sure is genki..." | |
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The Psalms have notes for words (e.g. "Selah") which are left in the original language because that word appears only in the Psalms and its meaning is unclear. | |
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"Allah" is simply the Arabic word for God - with a capital G, constructed from "al-", a prefix used to make words definitive (e.g. "al-Asad", the lion), and "ilah", the Arabic word for deity. It is perfectly translatable in English and other languages, but most Muslims, regardless of ethnicity and language, use it in everyday speech to call the all-powerful, monotheistic God, while appropriating their language equivalent of the term as a junior synonym. Sanctity is the usual reason posited for its usage, but scholarly studies often leave it intact to prevent confusion (the phrase "There is no god but God" makes more sense in Arabic, stating that you believe in the inherent oneness of God). As it is technically an ethnic word, the usage is not restricted to Islam; Arabic-speaking Christians and Jews also call their God "Allah" since possibly centuries before the dawn of Islam. | |
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Final Fantasy IX has Guest-Star Party Member Beatrix's special skill menu named "Seiken" ("Holy Sword"), despite her being a knight from pseudo-medieval Europe. | |
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The series as a whole has the Odin summon's attack, Zantetsuken ("iron-cutting sword"). Only FFVI and FFVII ever bothered to translate it ("Atom Edge" and "Steel Bladed Sword", respectively); it's been left alone in every other incarnation. | |
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The localizations of the Persona series, other than the infamous Cultural Translation of the first game, leave most specific Japanese cultural references untranslated. Persona 3, Persona 4 and Persona 5 even keep the Japanese Honorifics, albeit sometimes inconsistently. The main reason is that it gives the games a distinctly Japanese cultural flavor, particularly with its use of Senpai-Kohai to illustrate the relationships between students. Conveniently, calling the player character "senpai" also allows the voice actors to avoid having to use his name. Persona 4's English manual included a brief glossary of Japanese cultural aspects that players might be unfamiliar with (such as several honorifics, differences in high school structure and schedule, etc.), but there is otherwise very little explanation in the games themselves. | |
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In Kamen Rider OOO: In the original, some of the Core Medal animal names are in English, and some are in Japanese. That was good enough for TV-N, who would leave any subsequent mention of an animal in Japanese unless it had a Core Medal named for it in English. Translator's notes are few and far between. In one scene, Eiji mistakes the Candroids for snakes, only for Goto to correct him by pointing out that they're actually "unagi." If you don't know what that means, good luck; they didn't put this in a note either. It means eel. The strange thing is that it's not even something you'd be familiar with by watching a lot of anime or toku (although you might if you like Japanese food). At least the form names are mashups of the medals they consist of. |
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Kamen Rider Zi-O finally has a fairly straightforward translation job, save for a few terms still being left untranslated. In particular, sibling terminology is translated more often. Except, being a massive crossover thing, whenever something from a prior series that was left untranslated is said, it's also untranslated in Zi-o—for example, Den-O's "ore sanjou" and Fourze's "Space kita." | |
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A curious example: in the old Captain America and the Avengers arcade beat-em-up, one of the bosses the Avengers fight is a giant robot octopus called the Mecha Tako. Players were a bit confused, not knowing that tako is Japanese for "octopus". | |
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| Too Long; Didn't Dub / int_99e14788 | comment |
The very first episode of Tensou Sentai Goseiger had a boy calling the girls "Oneechan-tachi". Not even so much as a translator note for what that meant. It simply means he's referring to the two girls. That's it. Nothing special. | |
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The Pokémon franchise is known for its many creative localizations, but there are a few instances where they rather jarringly didn't translate some things. Paras's Pokédex entry in FireRed (and other games that reuse it), for example, leaves in a reference to "tochukaso" in reference to the mushrooms growing on its back; this is the Japanese name of Ophiocordyceps sinensis, a real-world parasitic fungus that grows on the bodies of caterpillars and other larva insects, and which has a preexisting English name — "caterpillar fungus." | |
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Too Long; Didn't Dub / int_9f89a5f0 | |
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Too Long; Didn't Dub | |
| Too Long; Didn't Dub / int_9fcc1686 | comment |
The Latin American Spanish dub of Talking Tom and Friends has many untranslated words from English in the dub, despite having valid translations. This could be justified as the dub was done in a Spanish-speaking studio in Miami, FL, and many of the voice actors and translators that work there are Hispanics, Cuban or South American expats, and the translation is handled in the same way how an American would speak, rather than a Latin American would do. | |
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| Too Long; Didn't Dub / int_a0112f3d | comment |
Tekken makes an attempt to translate foreign names of the characters' moves in earlier games. They are less and less inclined to do this as times goes on, however. Jun Kazama's moves from Tekken Tag Tournament 2, for example, are almost exclusively in Japanese. | |
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Too Long; Didn't Dub | |
| Too Long; Didn't Dub / int_a04210b3 | comment |
Due to low projected demand (it was originally released thanks to a petition), there was no dub track for Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth, but even the text wasn't fully translated with plenty of cultural terms being left in the original Japanese. | |
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| Too Long; Didn't Dub / int_a5549ed0 | comment |
The Sacred Scriptures Bethel Edition translation of The Bible does this deliberately, refusing to translate a number of words from the original and rendering God's name as "Yahweh". | |
| Too Long; Didn't Dub / int_a5549ed0 | featureApplicability |
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| Too Long; Didn't Dub / int_a599305d | comment |
In the Mega Man Zero games, the bosses call out all their moves and catchphrases in Japanese. Capcom of America wasn't particularly interested in recording English voices for the series. | |
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Too Long; Didn't Dub / int_a599305d | |
| Too Long; Didn't Dub / int_a62dae97 | type |
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| Too Long; Didn't Dub / int_a62dae97 | comment |
There is technically no such thing as a translated Quran. The belief is that the text of The Qur'an was directly transcribed from the word of God, and any translation from the original Classical Arabic would necessarily alter the text and thus be inauthentic. While Muslims tolerate translations of the Quran in an effort to spread the word to other languages, Muslims are often strongly encouraged to learn Classical Arabic and study the Quran in its original language. And yes, that's Classical Arabic; Modern Standard Arabic (let alone vernacular dialects), although a close descendant, is not enough. | |
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| Too Long; Didn't Dub / int_a71c2a8e | comment |
The Sandy Frank dub for Gamera vs. Guiron inexplicably maintained "Kon-chan" as the children's nickname for the police officer, Kondo. The Mystery Science Theater 3000 release of the episode got a running gag out of Joel and the Bots mishearing this as "Cornjob". | |
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| Too Long; Didn't Dub / int_a7bb29ae | comment |
In Mega Man X, one of the bosses is named Boomer Kuwanger — kuwagata means "stag beetle" in Japanese, befitting the boss's appearance and movements. But it sounds better this way. | |
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| Too Long; Didn't Dub / int_a7bb29b3 | comment |
Mega Man X6 barely translated any of their boss names, which leaves amusing names such as Infinity Mijinion (from mijinko, or water flea) and Commander Yammark (from yanma, a type of Japanese dragonfly). They were, however, able to come up with Blaze Heatnix and Blizzard Wolfang. | |
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Too Long; Didn't Dub | |
| Too Long; Didn't Dub / int_a7bb29b5 | comment |
All of Zero's (or Layer's) moves were left untranslated starting in Mega Man X4. The only exceptions were the English localizations of Mega Man X5 and Command Mission. This was probably because of Rule of Cool; it may also be in reference to the fact that Mega Man's weapons were in English (though spelled out in Romaji) in the original Japanese. | |
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Too Long; Didn't Dub / int_a7bb29b5 | |
| Too Long; Didn't Dub / int_a81325d3 | type |
Too Long; Didn't Dub | |
| Too Long; Didn't Dub / int_a81325d3 | comment |
From the Final Fantasy series: The series as a whole has the Odin summon's attack, Zantetsuken ("iron-cutting sword"). Only FFVI and FFVII ever bothered to translate it ("Atom Edge" and "Steel Bladed Sword", respectively); it's been left alone in every other incarnation. Final Fantasy VIII: Squall's Renzokuken (which roughly translates to "Continual/Continuous Sword") is left in Japanese, which is kind of odd considering the amount of trouble the localizers went through to rename everything else in the game, and the world has no Wutai to Hand Wave the change in language. Stranger still, the demo disc included with Brave Fencer Musashi actually did translate the name as "C. Sword". Final Fantasy IX has Guest-Star Party Member Beatrix's special skill menu named "Seiken" ("Holy Sword"), despite her being a knight from pseudo-medieval Europe. Final Fantasy X features the summon Yojimbo and his attacks Kozuka, Wakizashi, and Zanmato, all left untranslated for purely stylistic reasons. And also because these aren't the names of the attacks, but the class of weapon he's using. While not technically official translations, all the Western fan-covers of the main song Suteki da ne keeps the Japanese name in the lyrics, maybe because it's impossible to translated it without screwing with the tempo and lip-synch of the song. The official Korean version of the song did translate the phrase in Korean, mostly because, at least at the time the game was released in South Korea, it wasn't allowed to include Japanese lyrics in a Korean song. Final Fantasy V had a Fan Translation that left the flying dragons as hiryuu for no apparent reason. Final Fantasy V Advance cleverly translated them as "wind drakes" and called King Tycoon's drake "Hiryuu". The official version also left all Samurai job class skills untranslated, which makes sense from a flavor standpoint but has the side effect of obscuring their functions. In Final Fantasy XIV all of the Samurai attack names are left in Japanese for stylistic reasons, though this has a consequence of making the mouthfuls (their "Midare Setsugekka" skill is the longest attack name in the game) or confusing (all of their spells that spend Kenki start with "Hissatsu" before leading on). This is a pragmatic carry-over of the Japanese version, where the attacks are in kanji while the rest of the skill names are in katakana. |
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RosenkreuzStilette: The Fan Translation opts to translate the Gratuitous German words and phrases sprinkled throughout the original Japanese text, with the exception of attack names. This is done both to keep the gothic European atmosphere and also because outside of Voice Grunting and Boss Banter, it's the only time the actors have lines. For example, Spiritia's charged shot is called the "Seelegewehr", which could be translated as "Soul Rifle" or "Cannon of Souls", or "Die geplante Zukunft" which aside from being a mouthful, has the much shorter translation of "Foreseen Future". | |
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| Too Long; Didn't Dub / int_a870b316 | type |
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Papillon leaves a handful of French terms left untranslated, mostly the ones related to Penal Colony life and denizens. Of greatest import: bagne (the penal colony), cavale (escape attempt), mec (man or pal), and plan (a metal tube for storing money hidden in the rectum). | |
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| Papillon | hasFeature |
Too Long; Didn't Dub / int_a870b316 | |
| Too Long; Didn't Dub / int_b6145a16 | type |
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| Too Long; Didn't Dub / int_b6145a16 | comment |
SoulBlazer leaves its "Zantetsu Sword" alone, but thankfully it reminds you in the Flavor Text that it's effective on metallic mooks. | |
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Too Long; Didn't Dub / int_b6145a16 | |
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| Too Long; Didn't Dub / int_ba666650 | comment |
In Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, Volgin's "Kuwabara, kuwabara" Catchphrase was an obscure mythology reference which Japanese gamers would have picked up on immediately, but which went straight over the heads of Western gamers. note Specifically, it comes from an old legend where a vengeful spirit killed a man with lightning. The spirit owned the land of Kuwabara, and so the phrase is essentially saying "Hey, I'm one of your subjects, please don't shoot me with lightning"—it's a stock phrase whenever it seems like storms are coming. (No points for guessing how Volgin ultimately dies.) Annoyingly, the game retained conversations where Snake would radio back to base to ask about the significance of the names "ADAM" and "EVA", which Western gamers picked up on immediately but Japanese gamers would require an explanation for. This could be chalked up to the localizers being afraid to take many liberties with the original Japanese text. | |
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Too Long; Didn't Dub / int_ba666650 | |
| Too Long; Didn't Dub / int_bcadd7cb | type |
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| Too Long; Didn't Dub / int_bcadd7cb | comment |
Pops up repeatedly in-universe in Warhammer 40K, mostly when dealing with things in High Gothic, the "formal" language of the Imperium which is written in quasi-Latin, while Low Gothic is the common one written in English. Thus, your mission is not to guard the factory from aliens to save the world from being condemned by the Church and burnt by Space Marines; you are protecting the manufactorum from xenos, so the Ecclesiarchy does not declare your world excommunicate traitoris and thus send an exterminatus fleet guarded by the Adeptus Astartes. | |
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Too Long; Didn't Dub / int_bcadd7cb | |
| Too Long; Didn't Dub / int_c2463c53 | type |
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| Too Long; Didn't Dub / int_c2463c53 | comment |
Final Fantasy V had a Fan Translation that left the flying dragons as hiryuu for no apparent reason. Final Fantasy V Advance cleverly translated them as "wind drakes" and called King Tycoon's drake "Hiryuu". The official version also left all Samurai job class skills untranslated, which makes sense from a flavor standpoint but has the side effect of obscuring their functions. | |
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| Too Long; Didn't Dub / int_c2463c55 | type |
Too Long; Didn't Dub | |
| Too Long; Didn't Dub / int_c2463c55 | comment |
Final Fantasy X features the summon Yojimbo and his attacks Kozuka, Wakizashi, and Zanmato, all left untranslated for purely stylistic reasons. And also because these aren't the names of the attacks, but the class of weapon he's using. While not technically official translations, all the Western fan-covers of the main song Suteki da ne keeps the Japanese name in the lyrics, maybe because it's impossible to translated it without screwing with the tempo and lip-synch of the song. The official Korean version of the song did translate the phrase in Korean, mostly because, at least at the time the game was released in South Korea, it wasn't allowed to include Japanese lyrics in a Korean song. |
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| Too Long; Didn't Dub / int_c59579b6 | comment |
Chulip's localization left a few stones unturned. A good majority of text outside dialogue boxes (Goro's films, the chapter titles and the hint on what you must do in order to kiss 20-year-old Guy) were left untranslated. | |
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| Too Long; Didn't Dub / int_ccf23308 | type |
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| Too Long; Didn't Dub / int_ccf23308 | comment |
The fourth Katamari Damacy game has a lot of bizarre dialogue, including the failure to translate the word "kokoro" (roughly "heart" or "soul"). This might be Intentional Engrish for Funny, considering that the collection list for rolled up items mentions a building involved in the localization of video games and describes it as being "not too important". | |
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| Too Long; Didn't Dub / int_ce4d28 | type |
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On toku shows in general, almost every translation uses the terms "Super Sentai" or "Kamen Rider", even though they could easily be rendered "Super Squadron/Taskforce" or "Masked Rider", respectively. Part of it is brand name recognition (and in the case of Kamen Rider, it also avoids association with Masked Rider, the much-hated first attempt at an American adaptation). There are a few other words which are often, although not always, left untranslated on account of being either iconic, such as the Kamen Rider's transformation cry of "henshin", or completely unique, such as youkai, but these are starting to go out of fashion. Oddly enough, the Japanese version will sometimes translate words into English that the subtitles do not; "Masked Rider" appears frequently in writing though with no real pattern. | |
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| Too Long; Didn't Dub / int_d11cd383 | type |
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| Too Long; Didn't Dub / int_d11cd383 | comment |
In Kamen Rider Den-O, when protagonist Ryotaro unlocks his Super Mode, his allies press him to name his finishing move—while he's in the middle of performing it. Confused and pressed for time, he blurts out "Train Slash!" which everybody dismisses as terrible and spends the rest of the episode (and part of the next one) making fun of him for it. Except TV-Nihon rendered the name as "Densha Giri!", with no translation, not even a translator's note—and thus, no hint whatsoever as to what's the characters find so funny/lame. | |
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In Kamen Rider Gaim and Kamen Rider Ghost, all the Lockseed and Ghost Driver announcements that aren't in English are left untranslated. | |
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In Doki Doki Literature Club!, Natsuki is surprised that Monika doesn't like squid, because it's in her name (Mon-ika). The fact that the joke doesn't make sense in translation is lampshaded. | |
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Too Long; Didn't Dub / int_d1ad2f1d | |
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| Too Long; Didn't Dub / int_d1e766c2 | comment |
BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle is a bizarre example due to the inclusion of the characters from Persona 4 and also overlapping with Inconsistent Dub: Due to very likely Atlus's Executive Meddling, the game was forced to respect their speech idiosyncrasies of each one of the characters from that game, up to leaving the Japanese honorifics intact, while the rest of the other franchises that appear in the game, due to their respective corporate policies regarding translations from Japanese to English, either translate the honorifics or aren't included at all, making some character interactions really awkward, especially in the English dub. One of the most egregious examples involve Yumi, a character which is a declared Yamato Nadeshiko, her honorific speech is translated to English, compared with the rest of the characters from that franchise, which does not. Both characters are supposed to be speaking in Japanese in-universe: | |
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Too Long; Didn't Dub / int_d1e766c2 | |
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Soulcalibur IV averts this with Maxi's Rising Dragon of the Zodiac Critical Finish. He ends up saying it so fast and unnaturally that it serves as a good example of why this practice or Woolseyism tends to be used in translation: because direct translations often result in Narm. | |
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Siren does this with the word shibito — normally "corpse", but in the context it's used in the game, closer to "zombie" or "ghoul" — for stylistic reasons. | |
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Japanese dubs of shows like South Park and The Boondocks tend to leave American slang and slurs untranslated. Not only do such shows reference American culture all the time, but they also use words whose Japanese equivalents can't be used in media. In the latter show, this includes the word "nigga", whose cultural implications can be fiendishly complicated. | |
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Samurai Sentai Shinkenger exemplified this when Takeru is revealed to be a decoy for the real head of the Shiba house and child of the previous Shinken Red, who was off perfecting the sealing technique. They refuse to describe it this way, instead insisting on the word kagemusha. They define it by giving the literal translation of the two halves of the word—which explains absolutely nothing—along with a note that they made a movie by that name in The '70s and telling you to watch it to get the translation. You shouldn't have to do homework to get the sense of this reveal. Later lines of dialogue eventually give you a better sense of what's going on, but this isn't how a dramatic reveal is supposed to work. | |
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Done deliberately for atmosphere in Genius: The Transgression, a fan-made gameline for the New World of Darkness. Branches of special abilities have Greek names, Latin pops up in all sorts of places, and characters' motive-types are given German names. There's a section in the book detailing why each language is used where it is and how each came to be the convention. Greek was a "neutral" language during the Enlightenment when a French group and English group wanted to exchange notes, the Romans made the first records of a number of phenomena, and the catalysts for becoming a Genius were categorized by a supercomputer imitating Sigmund Freud. Really it's all just the Rule of Cool at work, because it's more fun to say "Grimm Skafoi mane" than "a really angry car". | |
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Final Fantasy VIII: Squall's Renzokuken (which roughly translates to "Continual/Continuous Sword") is left in Japanese, which is kind of odd considering the amount of trouble the localizers went through to rename everything else in the game, and the world has no Wutai to Hand Wave the change in language. Stranger still, the demo disc included with Brave Fencer Musashi actually did translate the name as "C. Sword". | |
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Many English translations of Russian literature (for example, War and Peace) will also leave large chunks of French untranslated. For quite some time, Russian nobility preferred to speak French rather than Russian, and leaving the French text untranslated (with a translation in the footnotes) gives the reader an idea of what was French and what was Russian in the original. | |
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Street Fighter is tricky with this. Sometimes, terms like "Hadouken" are left completely untranslated, other times, there is a strange hybrid between Japanese and English. One notable example in Alpha 3 is when the "Satsui no Hado" is translated as the "Hado of Murderous Intent" or "Murderous Hado," with Street Fighter IV similarly opting to translate it as the "Dark Hado." | |
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Mega Man: All of Zero's (or Layer's) moves were left untranslated starting in Mega Man X4. The only exceptions were the English localizations of Mega Man X5 and Command Mission. This was probably because of Rule of Cool; it may also be in reference to the fact that Mega Man's weapons were in English (though spelled out in Romaji) in the original Japanese. In Mega Man X, one of the bosses is named Boomer Kuwanger — kuwagata means "stag beetle" in Japanese, befitting the boss's appearance and movements. But it sounds better this way. Mega Man X6 barely translated any of their boss names, which leaves amusing names such as Infinity Mijinion (from mijinko, or water flea) and Commander Yammark (from yanma, a type of Japanese dragonfly). They were, however, able to come up with Blaze Heatnix and Blizzard Wolfang. In the Mega Man Zero games, the bosses call out all their moves and catchphrases in Japanese. Capcom of America wasn't particularly interested in recording English voices for the series. |
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Yu-Gi-Oh! was all over the place in its early days—depending on the mood of the designers, a card might have its name fully translated into English or have its name be left as a clumsy transliteration of its Japanese name. Just take a look at the original Field Spells: their names in Japan are simply the Japanese words for "Forest", "Wasteland", "Mountain", "Grassland", "Sea", and "Darkness." When translated into English, the first three were translated as their respective English counterparts, but the last three were kept in Japanese as "Sogen", "Umi", and "Yami." | |
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Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth left the term hinomaru, referencing the Japanese flag. Given the franchise's love of Woolseyisms, it's strange that they left this alone specifically. | |
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An episode of Kamen Rider Double had Akiko dreaming that she was the one who turned into Double; instead of the usual transformation call, the Double Driver proclaims "Naniwa no Bishoujo Kamen!", which means "The Masked Beauty of Naniwa."note Naniwa is an old name for Osaka TV-N translated the line as "Who is that beautiful girl Kamen?" Well, one out of three isn't bad, right? | |
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