History Main / TranslateTheLoanwordsToo

* The "[[CorruptChurch Ripoff Church]]" from ''Manga/BlackLagoon'' was translated as the "Church of Violence" in several fansubs. The official subs (and dub) keep the name intact.

* James Fallows of The Atlantic recalls a time when a Japanese person once asked if there was an English counterpart for [[InTheOriginalKlingon the Japanese concept]] of ニュアンス, or nyuansu. That is, "nuance." Which is from the French, er, "nuance".

* Parodied in ''Anime/ExcelSaga'': At one point there's an English text scroll, so there are Japanese subtitles. The English version then provides a hilariously inaccurate translation of those subtitles.

* The translators who worked on ''Anime/MegamanNTWarrior'' somehow managed to mistranslate half the GratuitousEnglish. Not only was it in English to begin with, but the first two ''VideoGame/MegaManBattleNetwork'' games had already been released in English without any of the same errors. Yet somehow, many instances of "punch" became "thump", and many a "bomb" became a "boomer".

[[folder: Live Action Television]]

* Some creatures in ''[[Videogame/CastlevaniaChroniclesOfSorrow Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow]]'' had their names wrongly transliterated from the Japanese, from simple things like "Arc Demon" (which is just missing an H to the proper form, "archdemon") to stuff like "Skull Millione" (which should be "Scarmiglione", one of the demons in Dante's ''Literature/TheDivineComedy'') and "Alura Une" (it should be "Alraune" - this error carried over to ''Dawn'' as well). One that's particularly funny, though, is an enemy called "Curly", which should actually be "Kali", as in, the four-armed Hindu goddess after whom this enemy is patterned. Another demon got the {{Unfortunate Name|s}} of "Lubicant". ''Videogame/FinalFantasy'' fans should immediately recognize Rubicante.

** The most obvious (and beloved) mistake in the game is garbling Cloud's 'bastard-sword' to 'Buster Sword'. This has been kept in better-translated material, because it turns it from a generic weapon type with an [[HaveAGayOldTime awkward name]] to a cool name for a special sword (that works as a pun on the phrase 'cloudbusting').

** Even TheNineties English dub renamed them (despite as mentioned being for the most part in english already), and often gave the same attack multiple names in back to back episodes, often with nothing to do what what the attack looked like... It also dropped the Make-Up! From the transformation phrases.[[note]]Some of that can be explained away by the need to make the lip motions of the characters line up with English pronunciations. Japanese approximations of English words can have radically different numbers of syllables. But only some of it. Other choices were clearly to either dumb things down for little kids such as the words "mandala" and "supreme", or to get rid of things that sounded stupid/too-girly to American ears, like the aforementioned "make up!".[[/note]]

However, bear in mind that loanwords sometimes evolve into "false friends," acquiring a different meaning in the new language. While 'confetti' is borrowed from Italian, we haven't taken very good care of it: it means "sugared almonds" in its mother tongue. Conversely, a German might think that she doesn't need to tell an English speaker what 'handy' means... except that it's a noun meaning "mobile phone" in German.

** The "Guardian" weapon was named "マインゴーシュ" (maingōshu) in Japanese. This one went over the localization team's heads because it's a loanword from ''French'' -- it's supposed to be "[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parrying_dagger#Main-gauche main-gauche]]".

* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVI'' has a classic example at the very start, where you play alongside [=NPCs=] named Vicks and Wedge. They're meant to be '''Biggs''' and Wedge, a ShoutOut to ''Film/StarWarsANewHope'', but the translator missed the reference and went with a more normal-looking transliteration.

* In a similar vain, some Hebrew purists hold that instead of 'sarcasm' (which is borrowed from English) people should say tsiniuth (ציניות, cynicism) which is both not the same thing and comes from Greek.

* James Fallows of The Atlantic recalls a time when a Japanese person once asked if there was an English counterpart for [[InTheOriginalKlingon the Japanese concept]] of ニュアンス, or nyuansu. That is, "nuance."

* Some creatures in ''[[Videogame/CastlevaniaChroniclesOfSorrow Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow]]'' had their names wrongly transliterated from the Japanese, from simple things like "Arc Demon" (which is just missing an H to the proper form, "archdemon") to stuff like "Skull Millione" (which should be "Scarmiglione", one of the demons in Dante's ''Literature/DivineComedy'') and "Alura Une" (it should be "Alraune" - this error carried over to ''Dawn'' as well). One that's particularly funny, though, is an enemy called "Curly", which should actually be "Kali", as in, the four-armed Hindu goddess after whom this enemy is patterned. Another demon got the {{Unfortunate Name|s}} of "Lubicant". ''Videogame/FinalFantasy'' fans should immediately recognize Rubicante.

* TheOtherWiki does this occasionally; for example, their article on ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid3SnakeEater'' gives the Japanese "name" in katakana, and then romanizes it to "Metaru Gia Soriddo Suri Suneku Ita".

* TheOtherWiki does occasionally; for example, their article on ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid3SnakeEater'' gives the Japanese "name" in katakana, and then romanizes it to "Metaru Gia Soriddo Suri Suneku Ita".

** It ''might'' have been a {{Woolseyism}} but the late-game enemy "Gighee" was probably supposed to be "Ziggy", as its look and moves are a ShoutOut to Music/DavidBowie. However, its horse-like appearance comes from how in Japanese, "Ziggy" is a homophone with "geegee", as in a bad horse.

* Some creatures in ''[[Videogame/CastlevaniaChroniclesOfSorrow Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow]]'' had their names wrongly transliterated from the Japanese, from simple things like "Arc Demon" (which is just missing an H to the proper form, "archdemon") to stuff like "Skull Millione" (which should be "Scarmiglione", one of the demons in Dante's ''Literature/DivineComedy'') and "Alura Une" (it should be "Alraune" - this error carried over to ''Dawn'' as well). One that's particularly funny, though, is an enemy called "Curly", which should actually be "Kali", as in, the four-armed Hindu goddess after whom this enemy is patterned. Another demon got the unfortunate name of "Lubicant". ''Videogame/FinalFantasy'' fans should immediately recognize Rubicante.
* ''VideoGame/PokemonRedAndBlue'' had this problem with "Celadon Mansion", which is very clearly an apartment building, not a mansion. The loanword "mansion" in Japanese refers to exactly that kind of building. Even weirder, the burnt-out building on Cinnabar Island, which more correctly fits the English definition of the word, is also called a "mansion" in the English version, and it wasn't until the VideoGameRemake of ''Gold and Silver'' that Celadon Mansion was corrected to "Celadon Condominiums".

* Quite a lot of the [[BlindIdiotTranslation gibberish]] in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII'' got into it this way, particularly with enemy names.

** Barret's mysteriously-named 'Ungarmarx' attack ([[UsefulNotes/{{Communism}} Marx?]]) was supposed to be 'Angermax'. This was ''not'' kept, and was fixed for the PC port.

** Even TheNineties English dub renamed them (despite as mentioned being for the most part in english already), and often gave the same attack multiple names in back to back episodes, often with nothing to do what what the attack looked like... It also dropped the Make-Up! From the transformation phrases.