The Amazing Digital Circus currently has 16 different language subs and 18 different language dubs. Here is a list of the changes present in these languages compared to the original English.
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Multiple languages
General:
- Canonically speaking, Zooble's gender is unknown even to Zooble themself and they are referred to with gender-neutral pronouns. In some dubs, their Ambiguous Gender is either handled differently or completely ignored since the used language either has gender-neutral pronouns meant for only groups or objects, or lacks any form of gender-neutral pronouns at all.
- The Russian language is heavily gendered to the point where even a second-person pronoun (ie. "you" in English) can denote a person's gender. Since Russian lacks a widely-used gender-neutral pronoun that can be used for a singular person, and since Zooble is usually voiced by a woman, Zooble is referred to using female pronouns in the Russian dub.
- The German, Polish and Spanish languages have a similar hurdle to Russian. German and Polish do indeed have gender-neutral pronouns but they’re meant to be used for objects and not people, while Spanish only has pronouns that can be interpreted as either both masculine and unisex, or only feminine. So all three of these dubs avoid using any proper pronouns to refer to Zooble at all, only ever referring to them by name.
Pilot/Episode 1:
- The sound Bubble makes when he eats Caine's angel food cake is just a generic "om nom nom" sound in most dubs, but some dubs make slight alterations. In the Spanish dub, Bubble is much more emphatic about it to the point of almost screaming. In the Russian dub, he says "yum".
- Caine offering Pomni the angel food cake and calling Bubble a parasite after he eats it are changed in some dubs.
- In Chinese, Caine calls Bubble a rice-bucket, the Mandarin slang term for a loser who does nothing but eat.
- The French sub and Polish dub have Caine call Bubble a freeloader.
- In German, Caine offers Pomni a strawberry shortcake and calls Bubble a "dirtbag bubble".
- In Indonesian, Caine asks Pomni if she likes the softness of spongecake in general.
- In Japanese, instead of calling Bubble a parasite, Caine screams "DON'T DO THAT!!!".
- In Russian, Caine offers Pomni an angel pie.
- In Ukrainian, instead of calling Bubble a parasite, Caine screams "EATING FOR FREE!!!" His words can also be translated to him calling Bubble a "free-eater" or "shit-eater".
French
Pilot/Episode 1
- When Pomni throws up, Caine tells her she'll be of cleaning duty for that. Right after, when Bubble cleans Pomni's vomit with his tongue, Caine asks him "what is your problem?"
- Instead of saying "Gazooks" after having found a name for Pomni, Caine says "Yooplaboom".
- Zooble tells other players to "go f(sproing!)k themselves" if anybody needs them.
Candy Carrier Chaos/Episode 2:
- When explaining to Gangle how he will proceed with the crocodile thieves, Jax claims he will shoot them "to the point their mother won't recognize them".
- The sub replaces Gummigoo's remark about players being "whack jobs" by saying "they got a lot in the pants", meaning that they have balls.
- When the Fudge asks Jax and the others if eating candy people is murder if they're delicious, he "gives them four hours", a French joke that refers to philosophy class exams where you have four hours to develop on a vague question, and which is commonly used in an ironic way.
- After Pomni and Gummigoo return from the debug room, rather than saying, "I'm so unbelievably disappointed right now," Jax instead says, "My disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined."
German
Pilot/Episode 1:
The German dub uses harsher language and insults more often and is full to the brim with referential humor. These references include, but are not limited to:- Caine remarking "We better call Mr. Clean!" after Pomni vomits.
- Caine calling Bubble a "dirtbag bubble" after he eats Caine's angel food cake, referring to the Dirty Bubble.
- Instead of "hoo-ha", Jax calls Kinger "e1", the square of the chessboard the white king starts on.
- The Gloink Queen calling Jax a "discount Bugs Bunny".
POMNI WAKE UP TIME TO GO ON AN ADVENTURE:
- When the unfinished render is shown, instead of saying "Don't look!", Caine says "SPOILER ALARM!".
Indonesian
POMNI WAKE UP TIME TO GO ON AN ADVENTURE:
- Pomni says "Wait a moment–" before getting turned into a pin.
Japanese
Pilot/Episode 1:
- While Jax's dialogue about hiding centipedes in Ragatha's room in the Japanese dub is kept the same, Jax adds an extra line at the end by telling Ragatha that she should be thankful that he gave her a warning first.
- Instead of abstraction, the Japanese dub uses the term "bugged".
Korean
POMNI WAKE UP TIME TO GO ON AN ADVENTURE:
- When Caine teleports Pomni outside the circus, he says "Your tantrums got quite a bit of attention on the internet, right?".
Polish
General:
- The series' title was translated as Obłędny Cyfrowy Cyrk. While this translation is not incorrect
, it's an unexpected choice because "amazing" gets usually translated to Polish as "niesamowity". On top of avoiding a five-syllable translation of a three-syllable word (which could cause problems when dubbing), the word "obłędny" also comes from "obłęd", meaning "insanity", which is appropriate considering the insanity of the setting.
Pilot/Episode 1:
- When Pomni screams about wanting to take the headset off, Jax quips "You don't say! Try turning it on and off".
- Instead of saying "My comedy mask is broken again...", Gangle says "Now, I'll never get to play in a comedy..."
- Caine's line "Let's get out of here before the Moon gets frisky!" is localized to "Let's get out of here before she shows her dark side!"
- When Pomni vomits on the floor, Caine instead says "Wow, you troublemaker, you!"
- Instead of "hoo-ha", Jax calls Kinger a pawn.
- In response to the Gloink Queen's rambling about how everything will be Gloinks, Jax responds with a line using "Gloink" as an Unusual Euphemism best translated back to English as "I don't give a Gloink about the adventure".
- Kinger asking Zooble if they experienced any game shows in the Gloink Queen's stomach is changed to him asking them if there was a game of Jeden z dziesięciu, the Polish licensed copy of Fifteen to One and the longest-running game show in Poland, aired since 1994.
- Caine mentions getting an "Alert RCB" on his Wacky Watch, in reference to the Polish system for sending mass weather alerts (and other messages) via SMS.
POMNI WAKE UP TIME TO GO ON AN ADVENTURE
- The Polish title of the short uses the Polish title of a certain Cartoon Network series, and can be best translated back to English as "WAKE UP POMNI IT'S ADVENTURE TIME NOW"
- One of Pomni's lines early on is localized to her asking if the Polish title of the show (as opposed to Obłędny Cyfrowy Cyrk') should have been Niesamowity'' Cyfrowy Cyrk. Before an official Polish dub of the show was out, many Polish fans expected a Polish dub to be called the latter, so it came off as a surprise to them when the former name was adapted.
- Caine, instead of claiming he canonically has no knowledge about Pomni's Internet presence, states he shouldn't know about it canonically. But then again, just because he SHOULDN'T doesn't mean he DOESN'T...
- Just like the Spanish dub, the Polish dub makes use of the cartoonish profanity filter too; when Caine says not to buy bootleg plushes, the brief image of bootleg plushes has a cartoonish twang sound, which is used to censor Caine's line: "Just look at how s#%@^y they look!"
Candy Carrier Chaos/Episode 2
- The episode - and by extension, the name of the adventure - has been renamed to "The Sweet Case of Syrup" ("Słodka Sprawa Syropu") to maintain the Added Alliterative Appeal.
- The Candy Canyon Kingdom has been renamed to the Kingdom of the Crystal Cuckoo (Królestwo Kryształowej Kukułki) for the same reasons.
- Gummigoo has been renamed to Żelkodyl (Gummydile).
- In general, the Polish dub has a lot of language that, while not exactly vulgar, is still more crass then what you'd expect given the in-universe "no swearing" rule and filters.
- Gummigoo tells Max to stop opierdzielać się, which translates to "screwing around" or an extremely light "fucking around".
- Immediately after, Jax tells Gangle to przypierniczyć into the bandits' truck, which is similarly a light "fucking hit them".
- When the Princess says recovering the syrup must not have been an easy task, Jax says "Szkoda strzępić ryja"; while none of the words are swears, it's basically a more crass way of saying "It's not worth talking about".
- Instead of telling Bubble he "can't say that", Caine simply warns him that the show will be taken off the air.
- Instead of claiming he will shoot the bandits until they're unrecognizable, Jax claims he will "shoot them down to every pixel".
- Jax does not reference the "submissive and breedable" meme when pressuring Gangle into following his orders: he instead threatens to "untangle her and hang her like a streamer" (not the internet carrier, but the toy).
- When told the heroes are not candy, the Fudge instead complains about not having a way to satiate his diabetes.
- In the original version, the Fudge claims he was banished out of the kingdom for eating "too many" of its people, roughly implying he was being allowed to do it but eventually crossed a line. Here, he says he was banished once the Princess found out he ate them, making it clear she was not fine with it and he was keeping it secret.
- Jax calls Ragatha a rag at one point. For some added humor, the word he used (szmatka) is a diminutive of szmata, which can be also used to call a woman a bitch.
- When Pomni vomits upon getting off the truck, Gummigoo says she should have taken Lokomotiv, the name of a Polish medicine for motion sickness.
Russian
Pilot/Episode 1:
- In the Russian dub, the Magical Profanity Filter fails to completely censor the swear words being used. In fact, they’re almost uncensored.
Spanish
Pilot/Episode 1:
- When Bubble starts licking up Pomni's vomit, instead of asking "Why are you like this?", Caine simply says "You disgust me."
- Caine's line about drowning in the digital lake is changed to swimming in it instead, possibly because ahogar (the Spanish word for "to drown") is reflexive and could have potentially slowed down the sentence to it being out of sync with the episode.
- Rather than calling Gangle "crybaby", Jax instead calls her "La Llorona", who is infamous for loudly crying over her dead children.
- The Spanish dub takes advantage of Zooble's mouthlessness to give them extra swears while caught by the Gloinks: They call the others "sons of *cartoon twang*" for not helping, and Kinger a mother-*car horn* when he tries and fails to assist.
- In the original English, after Zooble is spit out by the Gloink Queen, Kinger asks whether they experienced a game show - which was a reference to Gooseworx's previous works. In Spanish, Kinger asks if Zooble experienced a Turkish soap opera. This is a reference to Zooble's dub actress having dubbed many Turkish dramas in the past.
Ukrainian
Pilot/Episode 1:
- The Ukrainian dub makes Kinger's line about finding "the Zooble hole" a Double Entendre. Basically, it sounds like he's saying he and Gangle found Zooble's vagina.
