Lost In Translation / Anime & Manga

In General

• Japanese has several features that are impossible to fully convey in English:
  • Japanese Pronouns: Pronouns can give a sense of personality. A girl using ore or jibun would be a very mannish, outgoing girl. A man casually using atashi would be somewhat effeminate, possibly gay. Alas, English only has "I", so nuances begone!
  • Japanese Sibling Terminology: this is the bane of any translation between European and East Asian languages. Accurately translating the terms for "big bro" and "big sis" could convey a sense of hierarchy or respect, but it's usually infeasible given that European cultures don't really use this kind of address. English translators may have to opt for just "bro" or "sis" (or alternatively "brother" or "sister" for the more formal sibling terminology), or to just use names.
  • Japanese Honorifics: honorifics can succinctly denote relationships between characters, from very formal and distant to very informal and intimate. Publishers and translators thankfully are no longer afraid of retaining them.
  • Gender and Japanese Language and keigo: although both males and females use polite language, females tend to use it more often. Having female characters use polite speech and womanly speech patterns can add much refined femininity. In contrast, a female character using masculine speech patterns could have strong personality. All these nuances, unfortunately, cannot be adequately conveyed in English.
  • Alternate Character Reading: this one isn't entirely out of the question, but given the vastly different phonological natures of Japanese and most other languages, it may be quite a difficult task to make good homophone-based puns.
  • The stock phrase This Is Unforgivable! suffers from this. The Japanese word yurusanai doesn't just mean "to not forgive"; it also means "to not allow". In quite a few cases, "I won't stand for this" works better than "This is unforgivable" (similarly, "I won't stand for anyone doing X" almost always sounds better than "I won't forgive anyone who does X"). Many, many subbers don't realize this, leading to lots of awkward translations.
  • I Will Definitely Protect You is an unusual example. The original phrase zettai ni mamoru is almost always translated as I Will Definitely Protect You. The awkwardness of the phrase sounds like someone couldn't be bothered to translate it appropriately for the context, since the depth of its meaning is very contextual. However, if the translation took into account the context, it would entirely lose the humor of its use, which is almost always based on a misunderstanding of the context in which it's used. Then to get even more meta, it's probably also entirely unintentional that the original context is missed and probably really is just lazy translation.

Indvidual Series

Dragon Ball

• Dragon Ball:
  • In Dragon Ball Z, the name of Vegetto (ベジット, Bejitto), Goku and Vegeta's combined form, comes from a portmanteau of Vegeta's name (ベジータ, Bejiita) with Goku's Saiyan birth name of Kakarrotto (カカロット). However, the name "Kakarrotto" is romanized as "Kakarot" in the Funimation dub of the anime, while "Vegetto" for some reason became "Vegito", rendering his name meaningless. The Viz translation of the manga avoided this problem by renaming "Vegetto" into "Vegerot".
  • In the original Funimation dub, Frieza was portrayed as a short tempered Smug Super who had Ho Yay undertones, a brutish way of speaking and a feminine voice. In the original Japanese version, however, Frieza was portrayed as a sophisticated well-mannered, but Faux Affably Evil tyrant, who only showed anger when things stopped going his way. It was not until Dragon Ball Z Kai that American fans were introduced to the sophiscated, well-mannered tyrant he was originally intended to be.
  • In the original readings, Goku very much kept his unaware and uninformed country bumpkin personality throughout most, if not all, of Dragon Ball Z. However, when the series was first brought over in the early 2000's, his voice, manner of speaking, and personality was subtly, perhaps not even intentionally, shifted, to the point where he became more of a Japanese Superman, lacking any defining personality besides "Good" and "Likes fighting". This made decisions that would make sense for a dumb country kid who loves nothing except food and fighting, seem odd coming from what was essentially just the personification of Good.
  • Chi-Chi's dialogue in the original is written with a Tohoku accent, and like Goku, this is meant to imply she's a bumpkin who grew up in the boonies (which makes sense, as her dad was basically a barbarian warlord). And like Goku, a lot of her behavior (such as extreme naivete and her obsession with getting Gohan an education) makes sense from the perspective that she's uncultured and kind of stupid; she's smart enough to recognize that, say, getting Gohan an education is valuable, but mostly pursues it as an end unto itself. The dub wrote her as sounding fairly smart, likely to go along with that obsession and contrast her with Goku. This causes a lot of viewers to find her very unlikable, as all her crazier moments stay intact but it's far less clear that she's supposed to be a moron.
  • There's a point in the original Dragon Ball where Chi-Chi is trying to talk to Goku about their engagement (kon'yaku). Goku misunderstands, assuming that she's offering him konnyaku—a type of starchy vegetable commonly grown in Japan, which is often used to make noodles and gelatins. This joke doesn't really translate into English, so the English version had Chi-Chi wanting to talk about their impending marriage, and Goku assuming that "marriage" (or "wedding", in the anime) was some kind of exotic food. Luckily for the translators, this fits the character to a T.
  • The way Bulma addresses Goku in Japanese. She mostly calls him Son (Son-kun), although that's his family name, she calls him that way to show how close and familiar she is with him while the rest of the cast appropriately calls him Goku. Bulma referring to Goku as Son in English would make many children scratch their heads in confusion, so it was completely dropped in the English localization, and curiously in some other countries as well. The English manga did keep this in some instances, though.
  • Another one from early Dragon Ball, from the first Tournament arc: the announcer misreads Goku's name when calling for him. In the original, this was due to Alternate Character Reading (and the incident from the manga is the current page image for that trope). For the English dub of the anime, however, this was changed to the announcer having a hard time reading Goku's poor handwriting, which also fits the character.
  • In the King Piccolo arc, Goku notes that Yajirobe sounds a lot like Krillin. This is a Casting Gag in the original, as the two share the same voice actor (indeed, it originally appeared in the manga; Yajirobe was created so that Krillin's voice actress could still make regular appearances in an arc where he'd be dead). The two don't share voices in most other dubs, which leaves the connection lost.
  • All of Dr. Gero's creations are called "androids" in English, even though 17, 18, and 20 (AKA Gero himself) are cyborgs and Cell is organic. This is because the Japanese word "jinzōningen" has a more broad definition as any sort of Artificial Human. The dub at first spoke of 17 and 18 as if they were fully robotic, but this is ignored later when it became very explicit that they were originally human and are still organic enough for 18 to have a child.
  • There's one bit where Krillin attempts a Kamehameha. Once he pronounces "Kame-" there's a quick shot of Turtle perking up (kame meaning "turtle").
  • The Viz translation of the manga changes Majin Boo to Djinn-Boo, which leaves it unexplained why people under Babidi's control are branded with an "M" symbol.
  • In general, a lot of characters in the series have (usually food-based) puns in their names that aren't translated.
    • All of Bulma's family have underwear-related names. The dub keeps Trunks and Dr. Brief. Bulma is translated from Buruma ("Bloomers") and Bulla from Bura ("Bra"). To be fair, Bulma is wearing a shirt that says BULMA in the first episode.
    • The Ginyu Force has dairy-related names.
    Jeice = Jīsu ("Cheese") - translated in the manga as "Jheese"
    Burter = Bāta (Scrambled version of "Butter") - translated in the manga as "Butta"
    Recoome = Rikūmu (From Kurīmu - "Cream") - translated in the manga as "Reacoome"
    Guldo = Gurudo (From Yōguruto - "Yogurt") - translated in the manga as "Gurd"
    Ginyu = Ginyū (From Gyunyu - "Milk")
    • The Saiyans' names come from vegetables, with Vegeta and his younger brother Tarble being named after the word "vegetable" itself. Kakarrotto comes from "carrot" (hence the aforementioned writing change to "Kakarot"), Raditz from "radish", their father Bardock is named for a type of edible herb named "burdock", and their mother Gine is a reversion of negi ("onion").
    • The Nameks have snail-related names. "Nail" ("snail") and "Cargo" ("escargot") translated well, but there's also Dende (from Denden-mushi - "snail") and Moori (from katatsumuri - also "snail").
    • Chi-Chi = Udder/milk
    • Krillin = Kuririn = kuri ("chestnut") + shōrin ("Shaolin"). The chestnut reference is retained with his daughter (Marron).
    • Launch = Ranchi ("Lunch")
  • A major naming theme lost in the English translation is that many of the characters' names aren't really names, but titles. "Shenron" ("Divine Dragon" or "Dragon God"), "Muten Roushi" ("Old Heavenly Martial Arts Master")/"Kame Sen'nin" ("Turtle Hermit"), "Urunai Baba" ("Fortuneteller Old Lady"), "Kami-sama" ("God"), and quite a few others, are meant to be titles—but the dub treats them like proper names.
  • The Tuffles—the humanoid aliens who lived on the planet Vegeta before the Saiyans conquered it—got their English name from a rough anglicization of their original Japanese name "Tsufuru-jin". "Tsufuru" is a play on "furutsu", the Japanese pronunciation of the word "fruit"—hinting at their enmity with the Saiyans, who have vegetable-themed names.
  • Videl's name is an anagram of "Devil", which was originally supposed to fit with her father's name being "Mr. Satan"; it's also why Gohan and Videl name their daughter "Pan", after the horn-headed Greek god known for having an appearance notably similar to Satan. But since Mr. Satan was renamed "Hercule" in the English dub (since Cartoon Network wouldn't permit references to Satan), their names were rendered meaningless.
  • The ninja Murasaki's name originally fit with the rest of the Red Ribbon Army's Colourful Theme Naming: "murasaki" (紫) is the Japanese word for "purple" (hence his purple kimono), but also a fairly common Japanese unisex name. In the English version, it was rendered meaningless, leaving his name as an Odd Name Out. It probably doesn't help that the name's closest equivalent in English is "Violet", which is exclusively feminine (and there was already another Red Ribbon Army member named "Colonel Violet" anyway).

My Hero Academia

• Several in the English localization of My Hero Academia:
  • Regarding Endeavor's use of niisanra; both Viz and the scanlators made the mistake of assuming that he meant Shoto Todoroki had "older brothers", when in reality Endeavor was simply saying the latter had "older siblings."^note In Japanese, it's typical to group people together under one category/majority regardless of gender; Shoto has two brothers and one sister. A clue-in to this a few chapters later is during a flashback wherein Todoroki watches children playing outside, assumed to be his siblings, and one of them is wearing a skirt. Several chapters later, that sibling turns out to be Fuyumi, his sister.
  • The "U.A." in U.A. High School isn't an abbreviation for anything. It is simply the Japanese kanji for hero (eiyu) except inverted (yuei). There's no proper way to communicate this wordplay in English so the school just has a never revealed initialism for a name in localizations.
  • Regarding All Might's mention of Venomous Chainsaw, despite the scanlators' assumption, that villain was not the one who caused the injury that resulted in All Might only being able to fight at full power for a short time every day. The manga had been picked up by an independent scanlation group before it was licensed, and when Midoriya asked All Might if Venomous Chainsaw was the one to injure him, they translated it as "Yeah, he wounded me but I wouldn't let that stop me." When Viz released an official translation, it came out as "That lowlife? He could never do this to me." It later turns out that All For One was the one who had injured All Might.
  • In the dub for the anime and fan and official translations of the manga, both meanings of Deku were lost, since they both involved readings of Japanese characters, which they presumably couldn't explain for non-Japanese viewers in the timeframe given. So Bakugo calls Midoriya "Deku" because it sounds wimpy and Uraraka likes the name Deku because it sounds heroic and cute.
  • Bakugo's two prospective hero names, King Explosion Murder and Lord Explosion Murder, were actually examples of Steven Ulysses Perhero (being Bakusatsuou and Bakusatsuga, respectively, in the sub). Since the puns were untranslatable, the names were just literally translated.
  • When the localized manga shows the results of the Provisional Hero License exam, a close-up of the names of those who passed shows a name that starts with T(Tokoyami) coming immediately before a name that starts with N(Naito) on the listings. The notes in the margins of the page had to explain that in Japanese, the latter name would be close to the former in the alphabet, and then spells out the point of that panel- Todoroki's name isn't on the list.
  • During the Paranormal Liberation War arc, Midoriya uses Blackwhip, one of the Quirks he got from the previous wielders of One For All, in a manner resembling Tsuyu "Froppy" Asui's Quirk. The text box says, "Don't put this in a doujin!" which is apparently a play on "Froppy Style!" and the official manga localization uses the literal meaning without the pun.
  • In the final arc, use of Japanese Pronouns becomes a plot point. Kurogiri uses the formal "watashi" pronoun, whereas, Oboro Shirakumo, whose body was used to create Kurogiri and serve as a basis for his Warp Gate Quirk, uses the informal and masculine "ore." When Kurogiri awakens for the first time in months in Chapter 373, he declares that he is Tomura Shigaraki's protector, something that doesn't seem too unusual... except for the fact that he uses "ore" on himself, hinting that Shirakumo's personality may have awakened. The localization doesn't include the distinction in pronouns, and thus loses this subtle hint.

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A-D

• The Netflix adaptation of Aggretsuko uses the characters' Japanese names (which, save for Retsuko and Yokosawa, were Woolseyized for the subs of the TBS version). Fair enough, but the thing is, the names are typically A Lizard Named "Liz" names (for instance, there's a gazelle character who was called Giselle in the TBS subs and Tsunoda ("tsuno" is Japanese for "horn") in the original Japanese and Netflix version), so people who don't know Japanese are less likely to get the puns behind them, with the few names they actually do get being those of characters whose species' names are basically the same in English and Japanese (though it could be argued that Fenneko is a clearer name for the series' fennec fox character instead of Zelda (from Vulpes zerda, the fennec's scientific name) like she was in the TBS subs).
• A mild case crops up in the Latin American Spanish dub of the Ah! My Goddess OVAs. In the original Japanese, Keiichi refers to the other students in his dormitory as "-senpai", as it is common for students to address his seniors. However, the dub translates this as "maestro" (which can be taken as either "master" or "teacher"), something that doesn't make much sense considering they're all students.
• The title of Akame ga Kill! when read literally reads "Kill Akame" or "Akame Kills" and, due to its phrasing, is left untranslated. This causes issues when, in Chapter 64, Tatsumi tells Akame that, should Tyrant take over and he turns into a dragon, he wants Akame to kill him and delivers the last part with the exact same phrasing as the title. The untranslatable nature of the line however causes the significance to be lost, leaving it with a lot less meaning.
• One reason the Akazukin Chacha anime and manga never made it to the US is that they're absolutely stuffed with Visual Puns that are completely untranslatable and need to be explained in English.
• A key part of AKIRA that's often lost on non-Japanese audiences is that the title character's name is supposed to sound ridiculously ordinary and pedestrian: "Akira" is one of the most common male given names in Japan, and has roughly the same connotations as "Bob" or "Steve" in English. The fact that it's applied to a mysterious psychic entity with God-like superhuman powers is meant to be dissonant and off-putting to the point of being creepy—a bit like calling an ancient Eldritch Abomination "Sam".
• In Angel Beats!, one minor character, Matsushita, is repeatedly called "Matsushita 5-dan" out of respect, since he's a judo practitioner. The dub instead calls him "Matsushita the Fifth," because the 5-dan title doesn't translate as well into English. It later turns out that his name really is Matsushita Godan, so the "5-dan" part was his given name, rather than a title. Not only is it a pun that doesn't translate into English, but since given names come first in English, the part where Matsushita's given name is confused for an honorific after his last name wouldn't work as well.
• The Asterisk War: There is a type of MegaCorp in the setting called an "integrated enterprise foundation" or IEF. The English translation of the original Light Novels by Yen Press translates this correctly (there are six of them); however, the anime adaptation, translated by Aniplex USA, mistakenly refers to a single Integrated Enterprise Foundation, treating the term as if it were the proper noun for a single MegaCorp.
• Assassination Classroom uses a lot of puns that are really hard to translate, so lengthy translator notes have to be included with every chapter.
• Asteroid in Love:
  • In the first episode / third chapter, Mira opined KiraKira, Ao's suggested title for the club newsletter, as a "Nice Kira-kira name", in Gratuitous English. In here Mira, while giving genuine praise on Ao's suggestion, is also punning on the "Kira-kira name", the Japanese equivalent of Who Names Their Kid "Dude"?. In translations, the latter reference is unavoidably lost. At a minimum, the official Chinese manga translation put this double meaning in a Translator's Note.
  • Mari's college entrance storyline between Chapters 24 to 30 (or Episodes 7 to 9) involves Mari failing to be admitted by recommendation but succeeded in getting into the same program by examination. Many Japanese universities allows candidates to apply twice in the same cycle, once "by recommendation", or on the strength of their schools' references, and once through the traditional exam route. Few countries routinely allow applying to the same program twice during the same cycle, meaning that storyline can be quite difficult to understand elsewhere.
• Attack on Titan: Sasha is hallucinating as she lays dying, thinking that she and the others are about to eat a meal. Her last word is "Niku.", meaning "meat". Even Eren thinks she was talking about food (flashing back to a time early in the series when she stole some meat), but the next episode/chapters reveal that in the timeskip, she got a boyfriend named Niccolo (which would be pronounced as Niku-lo in Japanese). Since Niccolo is a good cook, it recontextualizes Sasha's hallucination as thinking she was about to eat a meal prepared by her boyfriend. Sadly, the English dub and localization of the manga merely translate Sasha's last word to "Meat."
• In Bakuman。, when Mashiro and Takagi are trying to come up with a Catchphrase for the main character of their manga, one of Takagi's suggestion is "This is not a wig !" ("Zura ja Nai!"), refering to the character's Anime Hair. In japanese, the phrase was a Shout-Out to Katsura's Catchphrase "It's not Zura, it's Katsura!" ("Zura Ja Nai, Katsura Da!") in Gintama , who use it because people keep calling him by his nickname Zura instead of Katsura. Aside from the pun not being translatable, the Shout-Out would have probably been lost on many western readers anyway, since Gintama isn't as well known in the west as it is among Japanese Shonen Jump readers.
• In BNA: Brand New Animal, part of Nazuna's desired idol image is a catchphrase pointing out that her name is a palindrome ("Spell it forwards, Nazuna! Spell it backwards, Nazuna!"), with this also hinting to her duplicitous nature later on in the story. However, it only works that way when spelled with hiragana, where all the characters are full syllables (なずな, or Na-Zu-Na). The Romanji version of her name backwards is "Anuzan", so it comes off as a non-sequitur at best or an accidental portrayal of the character as a ditz at worst if you didn't know that about the Japanese language.
• Black Clover has as an Arc Villain, a Queen ruling over a forest of witches. While this creates a nifty punny name in Japanese [witch=majo, queen=Jou’oh], English releases went with the comparatively mundane “Queen of Witches”.
• In Bloom Into You, the dub fails to convey some of the subtext from Sayaka's encounter with her ex. Sayaka calling Touko by her first name without honorifics loses some of its meaning^note It's mentioned in the Regarding Sayaka Saeki spinoff that Sayaka, being relatively distant, uses last names and appropriate honorifics on most people, and almost exclusively called her ex "Sempai", since most of the cast is on a First-Name Basis in the dub, and the "Sempai" honorific isn't translated. As Sayaka leaves arm-in-arm with Touko, she says "Goodbye" to her ex; the word used, "Sayonara," indicates that Sayaka believes she will never see her ex again^note Of course, the spinoff also reveals that when Sayaka erased her senpai from her list of contacts, she did so believing that her senpai would never call her again.
• Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo parodies this during "Bobobo theater", when the ridiculously long string of Japanese characters are read as simple words, like "Youth", with Beauty complaining about it.
• Near the end of Bokurano, Ushiro unexpectedly starts using "boku" as his personal pronoun(instead of the rougher and less polite "ore") while speaking with Waku's parents, out of politeness. Machi teases him about it a little, but as he reminisces about how the pilots had a sense of unity despite not having been close friends, he says "Ours" in Japanese- "boku" for I, the plural suffix "ra," and "no" to signify a possessive article. In the English localization, he says to Mr. Waku that "My name is Jun Ushiro, sir," which conveys Ushiro's unusual politeness, but lacks the reference to the original Japanese title (although the localized version is called "Bokurano: Ours").
• The Boy and the Heron features a Market-Based Title-induced version. The film is inspired by the book How Do You Live?, and accordingly features a scene where the main character reads a copy. The original Japanese title shares its name with the book, making the connection obvious to its domestic audience. With the English dub's retitle of The Boy and the Heron, however, the scene loses a layer of significance for viewers lacking prior knowledge of the movie's origins.
• In Cardcaptor Sakura, upon first being referred to by the name, Kero-chan complains that it sounds like a frog's name. Makes perfect sense in Japanese, where "Kero" is the onomatopoeia for a frog noise, and a common cutesy way to refer to an animal is to append "-chan" to the sound it makes. In English, it's a Shout-Out to Sanrio character Keroppi at best, or a complete non sequitur at worst.
• Some of the cases in Case Closed are lost in translation. Some cases can only be solved by realizing something about a common Japanese game, and the Japanese language is often used as codes. Many of the codes have the Japanese pronunciation written, followed up by "which means", but some of the references to games that help solve a case are nearly impossible.
  • One case is proven by a lighter being placed in a specific position on a mat that matches a piece in Shōgi, which is more or less the Japanese version of Chess.
  • Another case is solved by the suspect saying he was at a Pachinko parlor late at night, which is disproven when Conan brings up that there's a law stating that Pachinko parlors can't stay open that late. How is someone from another country automatically supposed to know that?
  • Another, several-parter case involving a serial murderer had the fact that all the victims played Mahjong together a lot be important. Translating this case resulted in lines such as "Going to the doctor" and similar, which make no sense to anyone - in the Japanese version, it would make sense since the Japanese original sentences were apparently misheard things you say while playing Mahjong. Exactly how anyone who doesn't have the original text in front of him and knows a lot about Mahjong is just beyond them.
  • Aoyama Gosho actually knew this trope would happen a lot when he heard that Case Closed would be translated into different languages. He apparently told them "Good Luck", knowing how many clues he made that were connected to Japanese sayings, mythology or culture that people without Japanese knowledge would find incredibly difficult to figure out.
• Castle in the Sky had "Laputa" removed from it not because it was meaningless in other languages, but because "Laputa" looks like "La Puta", which, to people familiar with the Spanish language, means "The Whore." Considering it's a pretty family friendly movie... you can tell leaving it intact probably wouldn't have been a good idea, so the localization team thankfully changed it. This goes both ways, as the name is originally from Gulliver's Travels, with it supposedly being because the island had no visible means of support. A rather dirty joke in territories where Spanish is well-known, but just sounds like a harmless fantasy name in Japan.
• In The Castle of Cagliostro, early fansub translators and even fansubber-turned-pro translator Neil Nadelman managed to miss that gooto in the description of the forged bills and the language on the rings refers not to "goat" as in "goat bills" or "goat letters" ("Capran" in the dub), but to Gothic as in the ancient Gothic language based on the Greek alphabet. (They were apparently confused by Miyazaki's use of goats as an Arc Symbol resulting in a bilingual Stealth Pun. Unsurprising, as puns don't generally translate well in the best of cases.) It wasn't until the new subtitle translation by Discotek that this error was noticed and corrected.
• Cells at Work and Friends!: Early in the series, one of the videos this Killer T rents is MHC & JK. To the Japanese, this is a Shout-Out to P to JK, another series serialized in Bessatsu Friend, but since this series is localized into English under the title My Boy In Blue, the shout-out is lost.
• In A Certain Magical Index, Accelerator's name is written down using the kanji for "One-Way Street" (一方通行). Accelerator makes a pun in one of his fights off of this, saying "The situation from here on is a one-way street!" The soundtrack also names his theme song as "One-Way Street". This is lost on English viewers, though fortunately it still comes off as a fairly badass line regardless.
• Chainsaw Man:
  • One of the devils in Public Safety is the "Tenshi no Akuma/Angel Devil", sometimes called "Tenshi/Angel" for short. He's eventually called by a proper name... which is the word "Angel" in English. Since the shortened version of the former name is the same as the latter, it doesn't come across in the English that he's being called by a different name.
  • It's revealed near the end of Part 1 that the story's Big Bad Ensemble are the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. However, this is lost on some readers as the first one — Conquest — is referred to as "Control" in the English translation because "shihai (支配)" can also mean "conquest", and is how the Biblical figure's name is traditionally translated into Japanese.
• Code Geass:
  • When Suzaku and Euphemia discuss the Special Administrative Zone of Japan, Euphemia asks if Suzaku will continue to help her. He starts saying "Yes, your Majesty" in English before getting interrupted, after which he says "Hai" in Japanese, signifying that he's helping as a Japanese person rather than as an honorary Britannian. The change and its meaning is lost in the dub, as he says both lines in English.
  • Japan becoming the "United States of Japan" is a plot point. The problem is Japan doesn't have states, but prefectures. In Japanese the U.S. is translated in a way where the term can make sense when referring to Japan (gasshūkoku, lit. "Nation of United People").
• A great deal of the humor in the American Funimation dub of Crayon Shin-chan comes from lampshading this trope.
• A plot point in Death Note ended up being badly messed up due to a lack of cultural context: namely, "mu." Most translations of the final eyecatcher of the anime explain it as "when people die, they go to Mu (nothingness)." This created the impression among a lot of the foreign fanbase that Mu was the Death Note universe's afterlife, or possibly even the world of the shinigami. In reality, "mu" (無) has another meaning—that being, "not applicable". Essentially, it's what you would give as an answer to a question where there is no valid answer within the parameters of the question—i.e. "how long has it been since you last beat your wife?" Giving it as an answer to "where do you go when you die?" suggests that there is no valid answer—meaning that there is no afterlife and people don't go anywhere, they just stop existing. But because the concept doesn't really translate, the meaning changes entirely to The Nothing After Death, and hence you have piles of Fanon about what Mu is like and how it functions.
• Detroit Metal City at one point has Krauser starring in an indie film. At the climax, he ends up spitting into the mouth of the male co-star and ad-libs the line "You are already... Unfashionable", a bastardization of Kenshiro's well-known Catchphrase. The film's director, following suit, makes the man's head explode in post-production. Sadly, the official translators completely failed at picking up the reference and mistranslated it as "there is nothing chic about you anymore".
• Digimon
  • Digimon Adventure 02 took out a scene where Tortomon urinated on a tree, which is why Davis and Veemon begged him to wash his hands as a last request. The latter was kept, but the former wasn't.
  • Digimon Fusion made OmegaShoutmon into OmniShoutmon, making the greek symbol for "omega" appearing on the Xros Loader a bit pointless.

E-H

• Free!: When Rei leaves the summer festival to tail Rin, Nagisa calls him "Reichantei" in the original Japanese – which is a pun on Nagisa usually calling him "Rei-chan", and on the word "meitantei" (meaning Great Detective). The English subtitles ignore the pun entirely and simply have Nagisa call him "Detective Rei-chan". The dub rewrites Nagisa's lines so he doesn't call Rei anything, although the next episode's dub has Nagisa say, "I thought you made a great Secret Rei-gent!"
• In Frieren: Beyond Journey's End, since the official English title is not a literal translation from the Japanese one, Frieren’s dreaded epithet among demonkind is read differently in English, which would be a Title Drop in Japanese as well. Sousou no Frieren (Frieren at the Funeral or Frieren of the Funeral) is both the series basic initial theme of Frieren being at her important companion’s funeral, Himmel the Hero, to finally understand how important he was to her in retrospect, and it doubles as her infamous title among demons, for the mass instant funerals she caused by killing hordes of them in her wake; in the official English release, however, she is called Frieren The Slayer instead.
• Fullmetal Alchemist:
  • The English translation of "Fullmetal Alchemist" created a very-delayed-reaction translation problem by not literally translating Hagane no Renkinjutsushi as "Alchemist of Steel" when the epigram at the very start of the manga ("A lesson without pain is meaningless, for you cannot gain something without sacrificing something else in return") was finally completed at the end of the series nine years later ("but once you have overcome it and made it your own...you will gain an irreplaceable fullmetal heart"), as "heart of steel" would make more sense. The English dub of Brotherhood rectified this by saying "...a heart made fullmetal" instead.
  • The character "Truth" is, in fact, a representation of a person's soul connected to all the world's knowledge. Brotherhood represented this by having it speak in the voice of any character talking to it. The English dub seemingly missed this and gave it a single voice actor, blurring its identity a bit.
  • Alphonse, who is for most of the series Animated Armor, is usually called "Al", which in Japanese is pronounced the same as "aru", which means "is/exists" — but only for inanimate things. "Iru" is used for living things.
  • Selim Bradley's Japanese speech patterns make it easier to figure out that he is the Homunculus Pride compared to the Western translation.
• A Filler episode of Full Metal Panic! has Sosuke, Kaname, and their school friends go to some war games at the local military base, thanks to their classmate Shinji Kazama's father being a pencil-pusher there. The head of the Opposing Sports Team is a parody/Homage to Gundam's Char Aznable, something which the ADV team either missed or didn't bother translating. In particular, at one point he starts giving one of Char's famous quotes ("Nobody likes to admit to the mistakes caused by their youth and inexperience"), but both the sub and dub render his line as something entirely different.
• Futaba-kun Change!
  • A fire-fighting cyborg that was a shoutout to Tokkyuu Shirei Solbrain used a monkey brain, which was afraid of fire. "Sol" in Japanese would be written "soru", while monkey is "saru".
  • In a wrestling match, Futaba is forced to fight a genetically engineered giant flytrap. In English it's first called "Dancer II" before reverting to a direct transliteration of its name, "Odori II". In both cases, it was meant to be read as "Audrey II"
• This is mainly why Gintama hasn't had much success in the western world; the humor is deeply rooted in Japanese pop culture and wordplay, and the show sometimes references anime that are either obscure to American fans or haven't even been released outside Japan.
• Granny Girl Hinata-chan: Hinata is a six year-old with the personality and mannerisms of an 88 year-old woman as a result of retaining memories of her past life. Some of Hinata's less obvious mannerisms, specifically her speech patterns, don't carry over well to English. The first chapter features her being corrected about using "ore" instead of "watashi" by her mother, a habit Hinata had developed in her previous life. She also has a Verbal Tic of ending sentences with "dappe", something that can't be easily translated since English doesn't have that kind of convention.
• In Green vs. Red, a Mythology Gag involves one Lupin-impersonator spray-painting "Rupan" on a wall, and another asking, "Isn't that wrong?" This is a reference to the Market-Based Title "Rupan" that AnimEigo used on its English-language Lupin III releases. This is an example of an inverted Lost in Translation, given that relatively few Japanese viewers would catch the reference.
• Haruhi Suzumiya's Disappearance movie has a scene where Kyon is standing next to Yuki. He says her name because it's starting to snow, and "yuki" means "snow." As it is, the line would be meaningless in English; so the dub somewhat awkwardly converts it to "Yuki...means 'snow,' doesn't it?", and the sub has an equally awkward annotation to point out the double meaning.
• The English dub of Higurashi: When They Cry doesn't translate the nicknames (for example "Kei-chan" is just "Keiichi"), which loses some of the significance of how the characters refer to each other. The manga translation instead opted to keep the honorifics.
• The title of Hirogaru Sky! Pretty Cure completely loses its pun due to its English translation. Translated completely straight, "Hirogaru" means "spreading" or "expanding", thus the title would be Spreading Sky! Pretty Cure. However, "Hirogaru", when speaking it phonetically, sounds like the phrase "hero girl", which is the big theme for the season. Thus, since it was translated completely straight, it loses its double meaning.
• Hitoribocchi no OO Seikatsu:
  • A lot of the humor is pun-based, and most characters' names have a pun of some sort in them, so a good deal of the humor is hard to convey to non-Japanese audiences. One of the few that doesn't have a pun is Hanako Yamada, which is basically the Japanese equivalent of Mr. Smith for women, a fact that non-Japanese speakers may not know.
  • The seventh episode of the anime was titled "Yawarakai Namida," a Double-Meaning Title that can mean "Gentle Tears," or "Kai Yawara's Tears," (since Kai Yawara, who'd broken off her friendship with Bocchi until Bocchi befriended her entire class, cried after seeing Bocchi again). The localization goes with the former title, and the double meaning is lost on English audiences.

I-L

• In If I Could Reach You (also known as My Unrequited Love), Kaoru's friends express surprise that she got married to Reiichi, who'd repeatedly rejected her. The word used for the action in question, "furareta," was translated as "dumped" in a fan translation, which is technically valid, but seems to imply that Kaoru and Reiichi were in an on again off again relationship, something that wouldn't explain why Kaoru's friends (and later, her mother-in-law), were surprised. The official translation says that Kaoru had been "brushed off"; in other words, that Reiichi had rejected her advances.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure has a recurring problem with English translations in that they tend to drop the prevalent references to Western music throughout the series. And in the seventh part of the series has the occasional scene of Gyro telling Johnny a joke that he thought up. Thing is, some of these jokes are heavily reliant on Japanese culture or puns, so they're really difficult to translate into English.
• Kaguya-sama: Love Is War:
  • The infamous Heh Heh, You Said "X" chapter/episode focuses on the word "chinchin", which is a slang term for "penis" but is also the Japanese term for "beg" (as in, the dog-training trick). The official translation goes with "weiner", which loses the latter connotation entirely and makes it sound like Fujiwara really is talking about her dog's penis apropos of nothing.
  • The show's Market-Based Title change ended up causing some of this. The Japanese title is Kaguya-sama Wants to Be Confessed to: The Genius' War of Love and Brains, but as the series progresses and the titular geniuses start being more honest with each other, Meta jokes are made about how the subtitle (and possibly even the main title) no longer fit the story. The second season of the anime gets this, being titled Kaguya-sama Wants to Be Confessed to? with the subtitle completely struck through — a joke which doesn't get even the slightest explanation in the US release.
• In Kemono Michi, pro wrestler Masked Ogre (or "MAO" for short) ends up transported to a different world by a Demon faction, because they wanted the help of another "Maou" (Japanese for "Demon Lord").
• Sucking up the baby Lobzillas in "Kirby 3D" makes Kirby turn into Kabuki Kirby. (rather than Ice Kirby, as his powers would suggest) This seems like a non-sequitur in the English, especially when Tiff claims that Kabuki Kirby is a magical ninja. It makes more sense in Japanese. Kabuki Kirby is actually a kabuki actor, and Lobzilla's Japanese name is Ebizou, which means "Shrimp Elephant" — an apt description of the creature — but also sounds like a notable Kabuki stage name.
• One slightly glaring example from the Love Hina manga: The Christmas themed banners in one panel say "Satan" instead of "Santa".
• The title of The Lucifer and Biscuit Hammer suffers a huge one in the first portion, which refers to Samidare being "Lucifer" for her wish to destroy the world. This seems unbelievably flimsy unless you know that "Samidare" can be read as "Morning Star".
• In Episode 3 of Lucky Star, Konata, after listening to an explanation about fraternal twins being from different eggs, makes a joke to the effect of "Speaking of eggs and sausages, I'm getting hungry!" The joke comes from the fact that the Japanese word for fraternal twins (souseiji) sounds almost identical to the Japanese pronunciation of the English word "sausage" (so-se-ji). Translators apparently couldn't find a way to Woolsey in a better joke. (Fortunately the joke is explained in the "Liner Notes" pamphlet included with the DVD.)

M-P

• Carim Gracia from Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS suffers from an in-universe version. Her Prophetinschriften ability allows her to see into the future, but the prophecies take the form of poems written in Ancient Belkan, which results in them being very difficult to accurately translate and interpret.
• The manga Mangirl. The title is supposed to be a portmanteau of "manga" and "girl" because it's about girls making a manga magazine. Unfortunately, an English-speaker tends to see the first word as "man" instead of "manga" and assume that the story is about something very different.
• Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid: Those who have read Cool-Kyou Shinsha's other works should know his works tend to become The 'Verse, and Kobayashi works at the company founded by Haru Jigokumeguri at the end of Ojojojo. However, Jigokumeguri doesn't look or sound like a surname, so Seven Seas Entertainment translates it into "Hell Tours Ltd.," omitting The 'Verse implications. This would be fixed by the time that the translation for volume 9 came out (since Seven Seas Entertainment had gained the rights for and fully translated Ojojojo in the interim).
• In Mobile Suit Gundam Wing, one factor that made some fans decide Relena was an idiot was her seemingly random declaration that Heero was "the prince of the stars"; the translators didn't realize that this is the Japanese title for The Little Prince, which makes Relena's statement make a lot more sense (as Heero came to Earth from space on a "shooting star").
• The title of Mob Psycho 100 sounds pretty cool no matter where you're from, but it also sounds hugely different to people outside of Japan. In Japan, "mob" is a slang term arising from animation, which originally referred to the nameless extras drawn in background scenes, and so refers to a person who is ordinary, unmemorable, and unimpressive. "Psycho", meanwhile, is used as a synonym for "psychic"—put it together, and a Japanese person would likely jump to the conclusion that it's about an unassuming guy with Psychic Powers, which it is. In English-speaking countries, while the definition of "mob" to mean "crowd" is still well-known, the more immediate assumption is that it refers to organized crime (and outside of gaming, it would never be used to refer to an individual), and "psycho" is almost always used to refer to mental instability, particularly in the Insane Equals Violent mold. Consequently, the immediate assumption is that the show is about crazy gangsters, which it isn't. Even once watching the actual show and learning that "Mob" is the main character's nickname, the reason for why he has that nickname doesn't immediately occur without the use of a translator's note.
• Naruto:
  • When Neji and Hinata battle during the Chunin Exams Hinata refers to Neji as "Neji-niisan", which causes Naruto to mistake them for siblings only for it to be clarified that they're cousins instead. The English dub couldn't avoid this plot thread so they had Hinata refer to Neji as "brother", which comes off as awkward as it doesn't have a dual meaning. It's also seemingly random as Hinata otherwise simply calls Neji by his name in the English dub. The manga has her initially say, "Big brother," but has her later call him "Cousin Neji" or just "Neji."
  • In the Japanese version of the scene where Naruto meets Kushina, Naruto realizes that she is his mother due to how similar their Verbal Tics are. Naruto says "dattebayo" at the end of his sentences, while Kushina says "dattebane". In early English dub episodes they gave Naruto a catchphrase of "Believe it!" but scrapped it after the second arc, with only the rare Call-Back afterwards. When Naruto meets Kushina in the English dub they translated her tic as "Ya know?". Naruto however isn't known for saying that term and thus the scenes loses the aspect where he identifies her by how similar their speech patterns are.
  • The English dub translated Naruto's Affectionate Nickname for Tsunade (a woman who's around 50 at the start of the series), "Tsunade-baachan", literally by using "Grandma Tsunade". Though this is accurate, it comes off as rude- granted, in the original Japanese, Naruto's remarkably casual toward Tsunade as a Sannin (and later Hokage), since almost everyone else in the village calls her "Tsunade-sama" ("Lady Tsunade"). "Auntie/Aunt Tsunade" would have kept the tone of the Japanese term, even if it's not as accurate.
  • In the English dub, Kimimaro calls Kabuto "Kabuto-sensei," as though the latter were his teacher. While every other use of "sensei" in the series is from a student to a teacher, he's actually addressing Kabuto as a doctor, something that the localization of the manga got correct.
• Neon Genesis Evangelion: During Asuka's Mind Rape scene, different voice actresses are doing an impression of her during the repeated portion of it. Thus, her screaming "That's not the real me!". The English dub had all the voices as Asuka's, which loses some of the implications.
• New Game!
  • Hajime once suggests that if she becomes Ko's boss, she'll stop using "-san" on her, calling her "Yagami" instead of "Yagami-san." In the dub, which doesn't include the honorifics (or even use the rough equivalent "Ms. Yagami") Hajime's Imagine Spot merely has her speaking to Ko in a more bossy and demanding voice.
  • When Umiko's discusses her new hires with Kou, she says that Naru was putting on "a cat act," (a reference to Naru's acting polite while Umiko's around but being hostile to Nene), while Nene was like an excitable puppy, prompting Kou to muse about Umiko comparing Naru and Nene to pets. The localizations retain the cat reference, but not the idiom.
  • An important character who is only known as Master or Sensei, in the original Japanese text, conspicuously called the protagonist “Mr.”, which was a hint that he was more important than he seemed, and perhaps supposed to make him seem extremely official and posh. Of course, a problem there, is that since the protagonist is a feudal Baron, that would be an improper way to address him in English. Some translations into English have Master instead call the protagonist Monsieur, which is both posh and a more proper honorific for a Lord.
• One Piece:
  • Edward Newgate's nickname, Shirohige, is usually translated as "Whitebeard", which gets across the reference to the real pirate often called Blackbeard, but seems like a non sequitur in that "Whitebeard" does not have a beard, but a mustache. As it turns out, the word "hige" just means any sort of facial hair.
  • A "sakazuki" is a type of ceremonial sake cup. This wouldn't mean much on its own, aside from the fact that "Sakazuki" is the real name of Marine Admiral (later Fleet-Admiral) Akainu, but as revealed in the Dressrosa arc it's instrumental in how an amnesiac, Luffy and Ace's thought-dead brother Sabo, regains his memory. It happens when he sees a newspaper article about the death of Ace, who was killed by Sakazuki. He and the others had sworn vows of brotherhood over sake as children, so the news linked the two for him in a way that doesn't translate into English well.
  • The series uses a joke when eight year-old Nico Robin first meets Jaguar D. Saul. Saul strains to ask for water ("Mi... mizu"), but Robin misunderstands it as mimizu (meaning "worm"). The Viz translation just had Robin repeat "Wa-water?" in confusion.
  • Oda loves puns, even multi-language ones, but they don't always translate well into English when the English word forms the basis of the Japanese pun. For instance, a lot of Doflamingo's technique names are English words that, when transliterated into Japanese, end with "ito" (meaning string, which is his weapon of choice). In the English translation however, while they still at least somewhat communicate the nature of the technique, they're just your run of the mill English words that rhyme with at least one other, like Parasite and Black Knight, or Overheat and Athlete.
• In Ping Pong, Peco's consistent use of puns throughout the manga created a slew of problems for translators. It was so bad for French distributors, some sections were deemed untranslatable, and their own jokes had to stand in.
• The protagonists of the Pokémon Adventures arc adapting Pokémon X and Y are named... "X" and "Y". Those are not nicknames, they're literally their names. Even in a manga where protagonists have are named after colors and gems, their names stand out. It makes sense in Japan where their names at least sound like names when pronounced. Their oddball names resulted in translations making them into nicknames. "Y" is a nickname for "Yvonne" in the English translation while "X" is short for "Xavier" in France.
• Pokémon: The Series:
  • It can happen with visual puns as well. Jessie's Wobbuffet and its constantly interrupting everything, in particular, was inspired by a Japanese comedian. Non-Japanese Pokemon fans were completely lost on it. It would have been semi-intelligible (though losing its full meaning) if Wobbuffet kept a name that sounded like a situationally-appropriate conversational phrase, like in the Japanese, Sonans (said phrase was part of said comedian's well-known Catchphrase, sō nansu = "that's about right").
  • In one episode, May tries to have her Torchic use Hinoko (Ember) but accidentally says Kinoko (Mushroom) instead due to the similar sounds. This joke wouldn't make any sense in English, so the dub has her say Amber instead of Ember. Despite this, the thought bubble of a mushroom still appears when Max corrects her.
  • In the Japanese version of "Challenge of the Samurai", Misty freaks out among seeing another bug and cries out "Mushi! Mushi! Mushi!", which is Japanese for "bug." But Ash plays dumb and dresses in a cow costume, asking "Ushi?" which is Japanese for "cow." Because the English words for "mushi" and "ushi" sound nothing alike, the dub changed this to Ash making his corny "Cow-terpie" joke when in the cow costume.
  • The dub got a little better with this over time. In the Japanese version of "Pokémon Paparazzi," when Todd Snap claims to our heroes he is a "genius cameraman," Ash mistakes the Japanese word "kameraman" as "Kamekkusu", which is Blastoise's Japanese name, to which Todd is suddenly wearing a rubber Blastoise mask as a Visual Pun. The English dub has to change this so that Ash mishears "master" (as in "Pokémon camera master") as "masker", hence the Blastoise mask.
  • The episode "A Chansey Operation" has Dr. Proctor defibrillate Pikachu with 10,000 volts. In Japanese, this references one of the moves the Pokemon can learn in the games, which was translated into English as "Thunderbolt". Regardless, the "10,000 volts" line was accurately translated in the dub, resulting in the comedic significance of that line getting lost on English-speakers.
  • The same episode had a scene in which a distressed Meowth begs someone to help him find the missing coin on his head, referred to as a "charm" in the English dub. A Chansey keeps giving him seemingly unrelated objects instead. The dialogue is as follows:
    Meowth: "Somebody help me find my charm! I'll pay any price!"
    Chansey: "Chansey?" (hands Meowth a bowl of rice)
    Meowth: "Oh, thanks! I said price, not rice!"
    Chansey: "Chansey!" (hands Meowth a Go board)
    Meowth: "I don't wanna play! Find my charm, puh-leeeze!"
    Chansey: "Chansey!" (hands Meowth a police box)
    Office Jenny: "Did someone call the police?"
    Meowth: "My charm! My charm! My charm!"
    (a Venonat is on his head)
    Meowth: "Will you... get off of me?!"
  • Those things in bold text are homophones in Japanese (koban, gohan, goban, kouban, and Konpan respectively), and 4Kids did the best they could with making it make some amount of sense, but it now comes off as Chansey intentionally getting a rise out of Meowth for laughs rather than genuinely misunderstanding his words.
• One Pop Team Epic strip sees Popuko threaten to fight a flight attendant after being asked if she wants beef or chicken. In Japanese "beef or chicken" is an idiom that means something along the lines of "are you gonna fight, or are you a coward?" (akin to the English "are you a man or a mouse?"), hence Popuko's aggressive response. Because the phrase doesn't have that meaning in English, it ends up looking like Popuko is either a really Picky Eater or simply angry at being asked to decide in the first place. That said, the joke still works because Pop Team Epic is a gag comic and Popuko's only consistent character trait is her Hair-Trigger Temper.
• "Purizumu" is supposed to be the shortening for Pretty Rhythm, pronounced as "Puriti Rizumu", but since it's officially translated as "Prism", the connection becomes lost.
• Episode 8 of Puella Magi Madoka Magica ends with Kyubey revealing that magical girls become witches. The exact line in the English dub is, "On this planet, you call females who have yet to become adults 'girls'. It makes sense then, since you'll eventually become witches, you should be called 'magical girls'". This makes little sense in English. Girl is 少女　(shōjo) and magical girl is 魔法少女 (mahō shōjo). 魔 (ma) actually means "devil". This is also the first character of the word 魔女 (majo), meaning witch. At least in the dub's context, you still get the idea of "girls" being the underdeveloped version of a female adult. In other words a "girl" grows up to be a "woman", a "magical girl" grows up to be a witch. However, one early fansub group (that happened to be one of the most watched ones) insisted on translating the words "Mahou Shojou" as "Puella Magica", leading to Kyubey's whamline being along the lines of "On this planet, you call females who have yet to become adults 'girls'. It makes sense then, since you'll eventually become witches, you should be called 'Puella Magica'" Which makes zero sense at all.

R-Z

• Ranma ½:
  • The series uses Chinese phonetics to give the characters from China names that sound like English words, usually objects (e.g. Shan-Pu/Shampoo, Koron/Cologne, Mu-Su/Mousse). Every English version just makes the English words their actual names, losing even the thin pretense that their names are Chinese.
  • The word "okama" is often used in ways that prove tricky to translate. While the term is usually applied to male-assigned people who wear feminine clothes, "okama" more precisely describes (with varying degrees of disdain) the nature of the people themselves, not just how they dress. It reflects the idea of gay and transgender people as being some kind of third gender/mix of male and female.
    Because of that, Ranma's Sex Shifter curse has often gotten him called an "okama". Every English version makes this "crossdresser", even when said by people who only see Ranma wearing gender-neutral clothing in either form.
    After spending an arc/episode appearing to be a lesbian, Tsubasa turns out to actually be a hetero, crossdressing guy. Akane then asks if that makes Tsubasa an okama, and he answers "No, I'm a boy who likes girl's clothes", basically saying he's a crossdresser, but not gay or transgender. The English manga makes it "I am not [a crossdresser]! I'm just your ordinary boy who likes to dress up." The subtitles for the anime just have Akane ask if he is gay, which is a bizarre question about a boy who repeatedly insisted he only liked girls. The English dub of the anime changes the exchange up a bit more, as Akane says "So Tsubasa's not a pervert... except for the crossdressing", to which Tsubasa replies he is not a pervert "any more than Ranma is".
• Rozen Maiden:
  • In a French fan sub, it became very obvious the sub was based off an English sub when Kanaria said she was going to play a requiem "pour la sorciere perdue" (for the witch that was lost), which is a mistranslation of what she said in the English sub: that which was lost.
  • Fansubs in non-English languages tend to do this with a rather high frequency: in a Brazilian Portuguese fansub of Excel♡Saga, at one point when Watanabe was trying to hit on Hyatt, he said to her that he was just a "corredor do moinho" (mill runner), when he was supposed to say he is a run-of-the-mill type of guy.
• Rurouni Kenshin: When Kenshin is first introduced to Shishio Makoto early in the Kyoto Arc, he addresses him as simply "Shishio Makoto", and Shishio complains about him being rude: "Shishio Makoto-kun, at least." This is a Japanese cultural thing that Western readers may not get: it's considered impolite to leave off the honorific (of which Japanese has several) unless you're very closely acquainted with a person.
• Sailor Moon:
  • In one episode of Sailor Moon, there is a shot of several boxes; one of them reads "天地無用" (tenchi muyo). Some fansubs interpret this as a shoutout to Tenchi Muyo!; the ADV Films "uncut subs" translate it as "no need for heaven and earth". "天地無用" is actually extremely common to see on boxes, and in that context means "This Side Up".
  • Sailor Moon in general can be very tricky to translate due to the amount of puns and cultural references used. Certain jokes (such as Minako's warped proverbs) also stop making sense when translated literally.
  • There's also the small matter of the main character's name. Usagi means 'rabbit', and in Japan, the Man in the Moon is a rabbit, so her name has a bit of moon-based wordplay. Unfortunately, that joke doesn't translate, and no Western parents would name their child "Bunny". The English dub team threw the whole thing out and renamed her Serena, which is a normal name that evokes the moon. Chibi-Usa became Rini, a cutesy diminutive form of Serena. In one of the manga translations Usagi is actually renamed "Bunny", but it's implied to be a nickname for "Serena".
  • All of the soldiers' names lose their meaning with the name changes. "Mizuno Ami" = "Asian Beauty of Water," "Hino Rei" = "Spirit of Fire," "Chiba Mamoru" = "Protecting Earth," etc.
• An episode of Samurai Champloo has the protagonists caught in the middle of a conflict between two yakuza families, and Jin and Mugen each ends up as a bodyguard of separate family. What's lost in translation is that the word used for bodyguard is yojimbo, and that film is what the episode is giving a Shout-Out too.
• Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei:
  • One episode/chapter has most of the girls visit Nozomu at his ancestral home, but Nami doesn't make it on time, because she's "normal." Nami's name's literal meaning is 'normal/ordinary', but more than that, 'normal' is the Japanese equivalent of a 'local' train. That is, a train that stops at every small individual station on the route, rather than skipping directly to larger hubs for commuters like the 'express' trains do.
  • Nearly every character's name is a pun of some sort, most of which aren't explained very well when translated.
• The Sengoku Basara franchise suffers from this to an extent, mostly due to the characters' different speech patterns carrying implications that are difficult to reproduce in English. But the anime has one specific instance: in the first episode Date "One-Eyed Dragon" Masamune says "There's more to the One-Eyed Dragon than just show." In Japanese this carries an untranslatable pun on Masamune's surname, "Date", and the word "date" which means "showy" (and which was historically coined for Masamune). You see?
• The official subtitles for Serial Experiments Lain calls Lain's best friend "Arisu". Her name is actually "Alice". The series ends up losing its Alice Allusion (and the change makes it confusing on why "Arisu"'s name is so odd in-series).
• Shirokuma Cafe has a Running Gag where someone will say something, and Shirokuma will mishear it as another similar word several times in a row. This is accompanied by images related to the misheard words, so coming up with new puns isn't an option. The subtitles on Crunchyroll don't even try to translate these, and just write the Japanese word with its translation in parentheses so people know the words are supposed to sound similar in Japanese.
• The closed captioning for the English dub of Spirited Away labels Yubaba's baby's rat-form's "chu" (Japanese onomatopoeia for a mouse's squeak) noises as "[sneezes]".
• Sword Art Online
  • Sugou, the Arc Villain of the Fairy Dance arc calls Kayaba, the man behind Sword Art Online and the main antagonist of the Aincrad arc, "Kayaba-senpai,"^note at least until his Villainous Breakdown, at which point he drops the honorifics a reference that he once worked under Kayaba, not unlike Kirito. In the dub, Sugou refers to him as "Mr. Kayaba," a respectful mode of address that doesn't say anything about the two men's relationship.
  • Early on in the War of the Underworld arc, Alice is surprised when Fanatio, vice-captain of the Integrity Knights, greets her using feminine speech patterns, since Fanatio had almost constantly worn a face-covering helmet to conceal her gender. This doesn't come across well in English, so the localization of the light novel instead has Alice be surprised at how Fanatio, someone she's never gotten along with, greet her in a friendly manner.
• Take Responsibility For My Stomach: In Chapter 7, Ritsu says "Kara..." upon opening the box of ingredients for her and Ruka's camping trip, which Ruka assumes means "karaage"(fried chicken), but is actually the word for "empty." Since the words sound nothing alike in English, the wordplay loses its meaning.
• Transformers: Due to myriad trademark issues and an attempt to preserve existing trademarks, a lot of characters in the Unicron Trilogy got a Dub Name Change. This meant a lot of characters who are obviously meant to be Continuity Nods to characters from prior shows getting the homage somewhat garbled. For instance, the guy named "Wheeljack" in the Japanese version and clearly intended to be a design homage to the original Wheeljack got renamed as "Downshift."
  • A particularly wonky one is the case of Megatron. In the original of Transformers: Armada, he was initially named Megatron, and then got an upgrade consisting of a snazzy new color scheme (which the toy labeled as "Megatron Super Mode"). Then in Transformers: Energon, he got a new body which was rather clearly based on Galvatron's design in The Transformers: The Movie, not to mention the circumstances in general being very Galvatron-esque—so, naturally, he started calling himself Galvatron from that point on. In the dub, though, they decided to have him calling himself Galvatron after he got those new colors in Armada... and then named his form in Energon "Megatron", which didn't make a whole lot of sense either out-of-universe (why is this guy who is clearly designed after Galvatron named Megatron?) or in (why did he go back to being named Megatron?). It only got weirder when he got a similar Palette Swap later in Energon—in the original, he starts calling himself Galvatron General, but in the dub, he... goes back to calling himself Galvatron. Consequently, what was a fairly straightforward homage turned into Megatron apparently alternating between names whenever he got upgraded.
• Trapped in a Dating Sim: The World of Otome Games is Tough for Mobs encounters a number of issues due to it being a Japanese work set in a pseudo-European aristocratic environment.
  • The character of Brad was originally written to be the son of a Margrave, the german equivalent of a Marquess, or a rank between Earl and Duke that is supposed to be in charge of a difficult border region (which in and of itself is a source of confusion, because there are also Marquess in the story). The Seven Seas Entertainment translation of the novels just simplified it into Brad being Earl ranked.
• In 20th Century Boys, the euphemism that the Friendship cult uses for killing people is the Japanese verb that means to break up a friendship. Since there's no single verb for that in English (at least until the advent of social media gave us the word "unfriend"), they simply use "banish" instead.
• ViVid Strike!: The name of the Winter Cup can come across as a Non-Indicative Name for people in the United States since it takes place on December 15th. (The first day of winter on the Japanese calendar is November 8th.)
• Yu-Gi-Oh!:
  • Kaiba persistently refers to Joey/Jounouchi with the label of "bonkotsu", a term that more or less means "mediocre or ordinary person." There are a lot of potential ways to render it, especially given the context that it's clearly meant as an insult—the official translation of the manga ran with "deadbeat", for instance, and the dub translated it into all manner of situational insults in the vein of "dweeb", "loser", "third-rate", etc. Then in the KCGP arc, Yugi plays a card called "Bonkotsu no Ijii", which he claims reminds him of Jounouchi, and the latter interprets this as a Stealth Insult. The actual game translated it as the rather more complimentary "Heart of the Underdog." The dub naturally had to follow suit, and still featured a scene where Yugi claims it reminds him of Joey, but the connection to Kaiba's insult is completely lost, as is the reason why Joey takes the comparison poorly (it's still an Innocently Insensitive remark, but not nearly as bad of one).
  • One of the more famous scenes in the series is one where Kaiba blocks the hammer of a gun with a card. One particular element in the scene is that the card in question is named "Goddess of Turnabout"—something almost comically fitting for a card that Kaiba used to save himself from a deadly situation. However, the card game decided to give the card the Gratuitous Japanese name of "Gyakutenno Megami", which, when it made its way into the manga translation, meant the joke was now completely lost.
• Urusei Yatsura:
  • The original run's DVDs in the US included pamphlets full of explanations on the puns involved in the episodes on the disc they were included with, rather than translators attempting to localize the translations.
  • AnimEigo's dub of the series also used the title Those Obnoxious Aliens to translate the pun of the Japanese title. "Those Obnoxious Visitors" would've made a better localized title, considering the double meaning of the word "Visitor".
  • There was a scene in the second movie in which Ataru is getting a wish granted. In English his words are translated as "Wa-water. No! Water. It's just water." As the room fills with water, which makes no sense. In Japanese, however "Mimizu" is earthworms and "Mizu" is water, which helps explain his sudden panic.
• Several jokes have been lost in Yotsuba&!:
  • One is concerning Yotsuba explaining what her dad's job is. In the ADV translation, Yotsuba thinks he's a 'trainspotter' when she's supposed to say 'translator'. The joke is that the word 'honyakuka' means translator and that Yotsuba said 'konnyakuya', a store that sells a type of gelatin-like cake made from a yam-like plant or the proprietor thereof. In a later chapter, Fuuka sounds like she was making a non-sequitur about Yotsuba's dad's konnyaku business being a trade secret when the reality is it's a callback to Yotsuba's earlier misunderstanding.
  • Another is when, in English, Jumbo refers to Torako as a "she" while looking at her photos of the hot air balloon event. This is problematic because the running gag is that Jumbo has never met Torako before and assumes that she might be Asagi's boyfriend (while the feminine "-ko" in her name would normally be a dead giveaway, Torako is generally just called "Tora", meaning "tiger"—pretty macho). This can be explained by the fact that, while Japanese does have gendered pronouns, they can very easily be avoided entirely.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! GX:
  • The character Chazz had a nickname and catchphrase inspired by some rather complex wordplay - his nickname was "Manjoume Sanda" in the Japanese version, Sanda meaning "thunder" and being a pun on "Manjoume-san da", meaning "It's Manjoume-san," ergo Manjoume is demanding people refer to him with a respectful honorific.^note  A faithful translation would be something along the lines of "That's "Mr. Princeton" for you!". His catchphrase incorporates this into a chant involving the Japanese words for the numbers ten, one hundred, one thousand, and ten thousand (the "man" in his name means 10,000). All of this was left out when 4Kids dubbed the show, and Chazz's catchphrase is changed to "Chazz it up"—still works as a name pun, but it also means that all the lightning references are kind of incongruous. It also created some funny problems far down the line, when a set of cards based on his deck came out, one of which gains effects based on its ATK exceeding 1, 10, 100, 1000, or 10,000, and whose name is "Armed Dragon Thunder"—leaving people who didn't watch the sub very confused.
  • In the original, most Elemental Heroes use a Something Person naming scheme, with their names ending in "man" (or in the case of their one female member, "lady")—Featherman, Wildman, Edgeman, and so on. This trend of Theme Naming is then conspicuously broken by Edo's signature Elemental Hero, Phoenixguy—which is then given a proper resolution when it's revealed that Edo's true deck is Destiny Heroes, almost all of whom have names ending in "guy" (Diamondguy, Dreadguy, Dogmaguy, etc). In the dub, likely out of a belief that the original names might sound strange or silly, most of these names were changed, meaning that the name of Aster's Hero, Phoenix Enforcer, is no longer the Odd Name Out, and its link to the Destiny Heroes is completely lost.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL: The English dub cuts out most of Eliphas' references to the Barian World needing to Rank-Up, which removes some of the symbolism of Yuma winning with a Rank-Down-Magic Card.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V: Yugo is constantly mistaken for a member of the Fusion faction even though he is a Synchro duelist because "yugo" is Japanese for "fusion". Since this doesn't translate into English very well, the English dub has everyone make fun of his name, for example people calling him names like "No-Go" or "Slow-Go", and one time when he tried to introduce himself, the people asked, "You go? You go where?"
• YuYu Hakusho:
  • You can't blame them for not trying to localize this joke, but at one point, Kuwabara says "A mulberry is a tree, and Kuwabara is a man!" The pun that would be virtually untranslatable is that the word "kuwabara" means "mulberry tree." In the English translation, it just comes across as a bizarre non sequitur on Kuwabara's part. The line in the original Japanese was "Just as a cherry blossom is a flower among flowers, Kuwabara is a man among men." They changed it in the dub specifically for the Bilingual Stealth Pun.
  • One other example of a common way to dodge around this trope/localize it comes when Itsuki recalls how he got Sensui to spare his life when the latter was a Spirit Detective. Sensui asks Itsuki if he had any last regrets, he regretted that he couldn't see Jun Togawa on a show the next day. Obviously, the chances of anyone outside of Japan knowing who this person is would be rather slim, so he merely said he had a TV show he wanted to watch. The Shonen Jump translation left mention of Jun Togawa in, with a side note explaining who that person was. The Japanese version of the anime left out Jun Togawa as well.
  • Translating Yusuke's signature attack to Spirit Gun is accurate, but the dual-language pun is gone. In Japanese it's called "Rei Gun." Rei (霊) means spirit, but it's pronounced like "ray," hence the pun.

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