History Main / BilingualBonus

* The current trope image.

* In ''Disney/{{Mulan}}'', Mulan has to give a male name when she joins the army. Stressed by the situation, the only thing she can come up with is "Ping." It means "peace." Furthermore, she is registered under her real family name "Hua", so her full name (Hua Ping) translate to "flowerpot", slang for a homosexual man or a useless prettyboy. It might also be the Chinese word for "soldier" (Bing in Pinyin, but pronounced Ping), which would be logical given that Mulan was panicking and picked the first word she could think of after looking around.

* W.S.Gilbert wrote a Latin chorus for the monks that march mysteriously through the opening song of [[http://diamond.boisestate.edu/gas/other_gilbert/mountebanks/webopera/mount_01.html ''The Mountebanks'']]. However, the lyrics are, in fact, grumbling about how awful it is to be a monk. ''The Mountebanks'' is [[OlderThanRadio from 1892]].

* Princess Katherine's language lesson and the courting scene in Shakespeare's ''HenryV'' both contain untranslated French. The latter is funny mostly for King Henry's unsubtle mangling of the language. The former is basically a scene-long build-up to two predictable and ''filthy'' sound puns.

* AlanMoore likes to make use of this trope, which one could expect from well, AlanMoore. In ''ComicBook/TheLeagueOfExtraOrdinaryGentlemen Black Dossier'' there are two Dutch Dolls who state why they're with the Gollywog
--> "Zijn geslacht is enorm." (His sexual genitalia is enormous.)
--> "What did she say?"

* In ''Film/MeanGirls'', Trang Pak and Sun Jin Dinh's dialogue becomes a lot funnier if you speak Vietnamese. Also, at the end of the movie, when Gretchen is brown-nosing to the Cool Asians in Oriental-sounding gibberish, one of them says (in confused and unsubtitled Vietnamese), "What?"
** Another one of sorts: "Regina" is the Latin word for "Queen". Makes sense, no?

* ''Film/ThePianist'' had the Nazis address Jews by the familiar you "du", an insult in German when addressing strangers. (This is most notable in a couple of scenes where Nazis are picking Jews out of a line: "du!...du!...du!".) When the Good German, Capt. Hosenfeld, speaks to Szpilman he adresses him with the respectful formal "you", "Sie". Towards the end, Szpilman tells Hosenfeld his name, and Hosenfeld says it's "a good name for a pianist". The Polish name "Szpilman" is pronounced almost exactly the same as the German word "spielmann", meaning a minstrel/entertainer. All of this is lost in the subtitles, of course.
** It's not a Polish name, it's a Yiddish name, with the same meaning as the German.

** When Tony Stark asks Natasha if she actually speaks Latin, she responds with the phrase "Fallaces sunt rerum species," a quote from ''Lucio Anneo Seneca'' meaning "The appearances of things are deceptive."

** In ''Film/IronMan2'' During the scene in which Hammer is yelling at Vanko for taking so long with his work, the Russian simply smirks and says in his native tongue "[[ShutUpHannibal You talk too much]]." To Rourke's credit, his accent is fairly decent (when he isn't mumbling). Vanko's line ''Tvoy soft govno'' ("Your software is shit"), uttered when he easily breaks into Hammer's computers, has even undergone mild MemeticMutation among Russian software workers.

** Also when Vanko tells Hammer that the drones at the show won't be fully capable, he adds that they will be able to "make salute." But in Russian, ''salyut'' means ''fireworks.'' The Stark Expo turns into one hell of a fireworks show.

* ''Film/IronMan'': The plot twist is revealed in the very beginning of the movie... in Urdu.

* The PoxyBoggards' "I Wear No Pants" contains a ''Tri''lingual bonus, actually. It switches from English to Italian to ''German'', before going back to English. The non-English verses (besides the obvious translation of "I wear no pants" in each verse) translate roughly to:

---> Not old macaroni!

* "Soy un perdedor" from "Loser" by {{Beck}}. Spanish for "I am a loser".
** His song ''Hotwax'' has the following chorus: ''Yo soy disco quebrado / Yo tengo chicle en el cerebro''. It translates to "I am a broken record / I have bubblegum in my brain."

** Merry Brandybuck is given the name "Holdwine" by Théoden. In addition to the obvious modern English meaning, in Old English it means "faithful friend."

** Merry Brandybuck is given the name "Holdwine" by Theoden. In addition to the obvious modern English meaning, in Old English it means "faithful friend."
** The title of "longest buildup to a pun that isn't even translated in the story itself" belongs to ''Akallabeth'' "The Downfallen", the story of the sinking of Numenor, a large island in the middle of a sea. Translating ''Akallabeth'' into the ''other'' version of Elvish yields ''Atalante'', which is suspiciously close to the name of a famous mythological island which also sank.

* "Soy un perdedor" from "Loser" by Beck. Spanish for "I am a loser".

** There's a possible variation in [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cxCyx7SMrA this]] RingOfHonor promo preceding a Montreal show, as Colt Cabana requests the help of Kevin Steen (also from Quebec) in translating "I can't wait to party with everybody in Montreal, ROH style" — what Kevin tells him is "''j'ai couché avec ma mère hier''" ("I slept with my mom yesterday"). Colt seemingly acts oblivious to the joke other than saying ''[='sa'=]'' instead of ''[='ma'=]'', but Kevin immediately realizes that Colt just switched "my" with "his".

** In Discworld/{{Maskerade}}'', the Pedlar's Song from the opera ''Lohenshaak'' begins "Schneide meinen eigenen Hals..." which is German for "Cutting my own throat".

* Several examples of this trope happen in ''Series/{{JAG}}''; in German, Farsi and Russian; courtesy of in-house polyglot Mac.

** ''Film/IronMan2'': Vanko's makes remarks about Justin Hammer and other events happening around him in Russian.

* Thanks to its [[WelcomeToTheCaribbeanMon setting]], the ''MonkeyIsland'' series is rife with this. Just to give an example, one of the central antagonists in ''TalesOfMonkeyIsland'' is named Marquis De Singe ('singe' being French for 'monkey', which Guybrush lampshades by calling him "De Monkey" in the fourth chapter).