Lost In Translation / Western Animation

• The Latin American Spanish dub of Agent Elvis suffers a quite annoying one regarding with the use of the word "pig" as a rude slang for police, since the dub translate the word literally, despite in Latin America, "pig" is used in many contexts, except for insulting police officers, giving the impression any people insulting Elvis or any police officer are calling them either "dirty", "fat", "ugly" or other childish insults instead. Even more egregiously, Spanish has a tons of words fitting as a insults for a police officer, but they are never used there, and even more so considering the Latin American Spanish dub, done in Mexico, is notorious for using tons of Mexican slang without guilt, so this a quite notorious mishap.
• Angela Anaconda: The antagonist is a pretentious rich girl that speaks French and brags about her collection of French things. The French localization didn't change any dialog or edit any imagery, resulting in something that made no sense for the French audience.
  • A slightly esoteric example is the inclusion of the now infamous pre-movie short for Digimon: The Movie featuring Angela going through a minisode of sorts by way of Digimon. This makes (some degree of) sense in that the two shows share a programming block, Fox Kids in the US but in other countries, such as the UK, Angela Anaconda aired on Cartoon Network instead.
• Asterix has some of the best translations for all languages it has been translated, complete with new puns for each language. However, in Brazilian DVDs of its old cartoons, the translator decided not to use the French to Portuguese translation, but rather a French to English to Portuguese translation. All of the puns were lost, and so 70% of the cartoons was lost with it.
• Ben 10: The names of two aliens, XLR8 and NRG, are gramograms, meaning these letters spelled out loud sound like the words "accelerate" and "energy" respectively. However, many dubs kept the original names even though the letters don't sound the same in other languages, making them just sound like gibberish.
  • Interestingly, an early teaser trailer for the 2016 reboot listed all of the ten original aliens by name; in the Brazilian dub for the teaser, most of the aliens' names were translated the same as in other shows, except for XLR8 which was adapted instead to "Acelerador" (which means "accelerator", and apparently uncoincidentally, sounds a lot like Fasttrack's dubbed name "Acelerado"). However, in the series itself, he mantains the name "XLR8" like in the previous shows' dubs.
• An episode of the Dungeons & Dragons (1983) cartoon included a quest involving a hare. In English, the confusion between the words hair and hare are played up as the adventurers think they are looking for hair. In the version aired in Mexico, this was explained with one of the characters saying, "Oh, you mean the hair on the rabbit!"
  • The Brazilian dub didn't deal with it too well either. The hare/hair wordplay was simplified by having the quest refer to a "white thing", which makes the main characters seem completely dumb for not noticing the bright white rabbit being held right there, in plain sight. Plus, Diana holding her hair while explaining the whole thing became a complete non-sequitur.
• El Chavo Animado: Two specific episodes on the first season had titles based on puns, but the Brazilian Portuguese translators apparently didn't get the jokes and translated the titles literally.
  • "Toques a ritmo de vals" ("Play it to a Waltz Rhythm"): Refers to a scene of the episodes where all of the characters get eletrocuted. In this case, there is a pun with the word "vals" (waltz) sounding similar to the word "volts", referring to the electrocution scene. The Brazilian title for the episode is "Toques a ritmo de valsa", which is a direct translation of the original name, but the wordplay is removed as "valsa" and "volts" don't sound as similar in Portuguese.
  • "Una broma de gran peso" ("A Heavy Prank"): The episode centers on Sr. Barriga, the landlord, playing dead and pretending he's a ghost to pull a prank on Chavo. The original title has a joke with the term "Gran peso", which literally means "Great weight", but also can refer to something very notorious or important; in this case, the joke comes from the fact that Sr. Barriga is an overweight man. The Brazilian title for the episode became "Uma brincadeira de mau gosto" ("A prank of bad taste"), even though the word "Pesado/pesada" (meaning "heavy") could convey the same double meaning in this context.
• A Running Gag in the Fairly OddParents episode "Fairly Oddlympics" involves that whenever somebody shouts "cheater", Cupid gives them a cheetah. In most non-English speaking countries, this joke doesn't make much sense, because the words for "cheater" and "cheetah" do not sound similar to each other in their respective language.
• Any humor in the pun-filled episode of The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack, "Pun Times with Punsie McHale", will be lost once translated and aired in a non-English speaking country. All that shall remain will be the horror...
• The German dubs of The Simpsons and Futurama are infamous for their literal (some might say "just plain bad") translation, including sometimes brand names or even band names, which led to a lot of stilted sounding lines of dialogue and rendered quite a few jokes incomprehensible. For example, in "Lisa the Simpson" a baseball cap is described as being "offensive". The German dub translates this with the identically sounding "offensiv", which however doesn't mean "insulting" in German, but rather "aggressive".^note The correct translation of the word would be beleidigend.
  • Also, Sideshow Bob's "Die Bart Die" tattoo in "Cape Feare". Since the German word for "die" sounds nothing like the German word for "the", this became a non-sequitur as Bob explained its "true" meaning.
  • In "Bart Vs. Australia", Bart asks a translator of a South American dictator "which way the water in their toilets turns after flushing." The translator misinterprets this and tells the dictator "the tides are turning" (meaning that his people are rising up to overthrow him), to which he panics and jumps out of the window.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • The Italian dub has its issues, as multiple puns are either missed or translated in a stilted way.
    • The episode "Owl's Well That Ends Well" has a scene where Spike falls asleep in a nearly-empty punch bowl and Pinkie comments that "the punch has been Spiked" - in the Italian version, the line was rendered as "Look, the punch is finished... or should we say Spikished?"
    • "The Mysterious Mare Do Well" has a scene where Spike claims he's Rainbow Dash's ghostwriter and Pinkie Pie acts scared, thinking he was talking about actual ghosts being around. The Italian dub has Spike describe himself as an "inbetweener", making Pinkie Pie's reaction a complete nonsequitur.
  • In "Over a Barrel", Braeburn's showcase of Appleoosa features horse-drawn carriages (as in carriages pulled by ponies) and horse-drawn horse-drawn carriages (as in ponies drawing pictures of carriages pulled by ponies). The pun is lost in many dubs.
  • The episode "May the Best Pet Win" has a Running Gag where Fluttershy corrects those who call Tank a turtle (an aquatic animal), rather than a tortoise (a land animal). This works much worse in the Polish, Spanish and French dubs, as these languages doesn't have entirely separate words for both animals; the Polish, Spanish and French terms for "turtle" and "tortoise" translate to "aquatic tortoise" and "land-based tortoise". So, in the Polish, Spanish and French dubs, every time someone mentions that Tank's a tortoise, Fluttershy pops up to completely unnecessarily note that he's "land-based".
• While most of the time Voice Acting in Latin American Spanish dubbing is good, the translators themselves tend to do a lot of mistakes or forget to research previous works. Hence there was an episode in X-Men: Evolution when Juggernaut was translated as "Hacker" (precisely before the real Hacker character appeared making it completely meaningless).^note This can be explained as the dub from the previous series was done in Mexico, and the Evolution one was done in Venezuela. A sudden change in the translation of Juggernaut from "Destroyer" to "Leviathan".
• Avatar: The Last Airbender:
  • The Latin American Spanish dub translated the nickname "Twinkle-Toes" as two different things (one for each season where it's used), and a lot of Sokka's humor got lost in translation.
  • In the very first episode a point is made that bending is not magic. But in Russian there's no other way to refer to the stuff they do that would sound natural, so the benders are called "mages", and that point is lost.
  • The Italian dub of "Tales of Ba Sing Se" translates literally all the dialogue in the Sokka segment, missing completely the fact that they were speaking in haikus.
• The Tex Avery MGM Cartoons short "Symphony in Slang" is about a man telling his life story with lots and lots of idiomatic expressions, all of it illustrated by Visual Puns (e.g. someone's "old flame" is depicted as an actual humanoid mass of fire, someone "draws a gun" on the hero... with a ballpoint pen, etc.) The cartoon was dubbed into Polish—with all the idioms translated literally to match the visuals, resulting in the entire short becoming incomprehensible gibberish.
• There are several Tex Avery MGM Cartoons and Looney Tunes cartoons where a character, witnessing someone else's bizarre or dimwitted behavior, holds up a card with an image of a screw and a baseball. It's a Visual Pun ("screwball"). This just becomes baffling when the cartoons get dubbed into other languages.
• Every fourth wall joke built around the commercial break is lost in Italy, where the law forbids commercial breaks into 20-minute cartoons.
• The famous Let's Get Dangerous! line from Darkwing Duck becomes a bland "Hay que entrar en acción" (let's get into action) in Spain, ruining a lot of jokes about "danger".
• In a relatively mild case, the joke behind Eeyore's Punny Name in A. A. Milne's original Winnie the Pooh books is a bit less obvious now that Disney's many, many animated adaptations have long since overshadowed the originals. Why? When said with a British accent, as Milne's original British readers would have said it, it's much more obvious that his name is meant to resemble the sound of a braying donkey ("Ee-yaw" rather than "Ee-yore"). It's easy to forget that fact today, as Disney's adaptations were all produced and acted out by Americans, who pronounce the name with a hard "r" sound. Ironically, The Narrator is the only character in Disney's adaptations to pronounce Eeyore's name correctly on a consistent basis, being British and all.
• Dexter's Laboratory:
  • In the episode "Accent You Hate", a school bully hated kids with funny accents, to the extent of bullying Dexter's friends and challenging him to a fight, but in the Mexican dub every trace of a funny accent is lost, so it makes no sense that he disliked Dexter's since it's completely neutral. It makes even less sense considering that Dexter's voice actor for LatAm sounds very normal and not squeaky and young as in English.
  • In the Italian dub the bully's hatred was changed to "kids who look and sound funny, especially the ones wearing glasses"... but the accent part is still there in the other bullied kids who team up with Dexter.
  • The episode "The Big Cheese", in which Dexter says "omelette du fromage" and others find this charming because Everything Sounds Sexier in French, wasn't changed or corrected in its French translation (the phrase technically should be "omelette au fromage"). In the French version of the episode, Dexter endlessly repeats "omelette of cheese" and everybody finds that romantic for no reason.
• Le Papillon ("Butterfly") is renamed "Hawk Moth" in the English, Korean, and Japanese versions of Miraculous Ladybug. Hawk Moth leads a swarm of evil butterflies.
• The song "Stronger Than You" from Steven Universe is about The Power of Love involving two female characters. The French dub originally translated it as a song about The Power of Friendship. After complaints about the dub trying to Hide Your Lesbians, it was stated to be a translation issue and the song was redubbed properly.
• Occasionally happens in the English dub of Kaeloo, which is originally a French series.
  • In the French dub of the series pilot, Kaeloo notes that the weather is nice, and suggests playing a game called "1, 2, 3, soleil", which literally translates to "1, 2, 3, sun". In the English dub, the game is called "Red Light, Green Light, 1, 2, 3", so Kaeloo randomly brings up the game after talking about the weather.
  • In one episode, Quack Quack tries to communicate with Stumpy via Hand Signals and inform him that his stash of yogurt has been stolen. Since the French word "voler" means both "fly" and "steal", he flaps his hands like wings to explain. Stumpy asks if the yogurts have been stolen, and Quack Quack says yes. In the English dub, Stumpy asks if the yogurt flew away, and Quack Quack still says yes.
• In the Dutch dub of Shimmer and Shine, Boom-Zahramay is never used in it's original form. The letters after "Boom-Zahram-" are changed to rhyme with the rest of the chant. Examples:
  • Boem-Zahrameer, drie wensen per keer... (heard in the theme song)
  • Boem-Zahramaan, je (eerste/tweede/derde) wens komt eraan! Shimmer en Shine, (insert wish)-festijn!
    • The intro of the show's French dub strangely questions if the titular characters are genies or fairies. The former answer is correct.
• Spongebob Squarepants:
  • Any pants-related puns or nicknames aimed at SpongeBob SquarePants tend to suffer this in dubs where he receives a Dub Name Change, like in Germany, where his surname was changed to Schwammkopf, combining the words "sponge" and "Schwachkopf" (meaning idiot/loon).
  • The ending of "Texas" features the Bikini Bottomites trying to cheer up a homesick Sandy by appropriating Texan customs like square dancing, barbeque, and ten-gallon hats but by interpreting them literally, like square dancing being someone dancing with a square. Needless to say, the joke is completely lost in most dubs, and turns into Texans just having very weird customs.
  • "Walking Small" features a scene where SpongeBob makes an "airline food" stand-up joke ("Airline food! My gosh, what is up with that stuff?!"). In the Latin American dub, the joke is translated literally ("¡Comida de avión! Ay percebes, ¿qué es esa cosa?"), losing all of its sense and yielding a Non Sequitur.
  • "Pranks a Lot" features a montage of people screaming "Ghosts!" that gets interrupted by one guy randomly saying "Toast". In other languages, "ghost" and "toast" don’t rhyme, though it could arguably enhance the joke by making the "toast" bit an even more random Non Sequitur.
  • In "Sailor Mouth", there's a scene where Spongebob and Patrick are wondering what Mr. Krabs will do against them for swearing, Spongebob says "We'll probably get 40 lashes" and Patrick says "Oh no!" and imagines himself with several eyelashes. The Brazilian dub kept that scene but translated it literally, which completely destroyed the pun (as the words for "lashes" and "eyelashes" doesn't sound similar in Portuguese). It arguably did still work as a joke, due to Patrick's thought being entertainingly nonsensical in the dub, but the original joke was completely lost. The Latin American Spanish dub had the exact same problem with the same joke, with the difference that the line was changed as "Maybe he will torture us in a terrible way".
  • During the climax of "Can You Spare A Dime", SpongeBob constantly emphasizes on the words "work" and "job" in order to convince the unemployed Squidward to get a new job. Many translations, such as Brazilian Portuguese, have completely different idioms that don't correlate with neither of these words (such as the "Two things in this house that don't work" line), thus making it seem like SpongeBob has lost his mind from being mooched off and was sprouting non-sequiturs.
• The Arabic version of the Tiny Toon Adventures theme song has two incorrect translations: It says Elmyra is sweet (even though she abuses animals) and says Furball "does not ask".
• In one of the Halloween episodes of Bob's Burgers, Tina dresses up as a nun and carries a briefcase, and states she's dressed up as "Nun of your business". The pun is lost on many foreign dubs.
• Uncle Grandpa had a similar problem to the aforementioned Dungeons & Dragons (1983) translation error. In the short after "Driver's Test", Pizza Steve keeps talking about how he has a thick, luxurious hair, leaving Mr. Gus baffled by this as Pizza Steve doesn't have any hair. In the end of the short, Uncle Grandpa gives Pizza Steve a fluffy hare, and Mr. Gus realizes that's the thick luxurious hare he was talking about. In the Brazilian dub, the words hare and hair were both translated literally, so the joke ended up making no sense, with the characters calling the hare a "hair" even though the words are completely different in Portuguese. The Latin American Spanish dub had the exact same problem, although Woolseyism tried to alleviate this by saying that the hare's name is "Hair".

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