Basic Trope: A translator declines to translate the ruder parts of a message.
- Straight: Troperian tourists Alice and Bob are in Wikiland, and since Bob doesn't understand Wikilandic, Alice has to fill in for him. When one of the locals offers to help them but insults Bob's fashion sense, Alice does not include the latter part in her re-telling.
- Exaggerated: A local tells Alice and Bob to "fuck off, dumb whore and dumber manwhore"; Alice translates that as "I'm busy right now, sorry".
- Downplayed: A local shouts harsh swears at Bob; Alice simply says that "he's insulting us" without going into detail.
- Justified: Bob is already under a lot of stress from being stuck in an unfamiliar place; Alice doesn't want the situation to escalate.
- Inverted:
- A local is very nice to Alice and even flirts with Bob. When Alice translates them, she peppers them with sarcasm and even throws in swears to make the local seem angrier than she was.
- Spice Up the Subtitles
- Subverted: Alice does eventually tell Bob that they were getting insulted.
- Double Subverted: But when Alice does translate those insults, she replaces them with milder curses in their native tongue.
- Parodied:
- This exchange:Alice: Excuse me sir, do you know if there are any good hotels nearby?
Local: Shut up!! I'll shove a fucking icepick up your arse if you don't leave me alone, all right?!
Alice: ...He doesn't know, Bob. - Alice must avoid translating alien profanity for Bob's benefit.
- This exchange:
- Zig-Zagged: Sometimes Alice translates things in a more delicate manner, sometimes without.
- Averted: Whenever Alice translates something, it is about as harsh or kind as the original sentence.
- Enforced: The translators of a work reason that if they translated the cussing literally, the translation would end up with a harsher content rating than the original due to cultural differences, so they downplay it to placate the local executives.
- Lampshaded: Bob asks himself "If these people are so nice to us, why do they look so angry?"
- Invoked: Bob asks Alice straight away to translate only the essentials of their conversations.
- Exploited:
- Alice uses this tactic to defuse the tension between two people who can't communicate, but still dislike each other over a misunderstanding.
- Somebody convinces Bob that Alice doesn't have his interests at heart since her translations leave stuff out.
- Defied: "All right, Bob, I'm not going to mince their words. They offered to help us, but they also said your outfit sucks."
- Discussed: "Alice, are you sure that that translation was correct?" "Well... They said some other stuff too, Bob, but it wasn't relevant."
- Conversed: "You'd think Bob would realise he's getting made fun of in this scene even if Alice isn't translating the insults. Just look at that local's shit-eating grin!"
- Implied: The locals' speech is rendered in gibberish, but Alice is sometimes seen grimacing before she translates a seemingly benign sentence.
- Played for Drama: Alice needs to translate something related to a traumatizing Noodle Incident in her life.
"Bist du so verdammt faul, dass du nicht dem Knopf ganz oben auf der Seite trücken kann? Nimm diesem Link und fahr danach zum Hölle."
"... He said he could give us a new link, just click the blue text above."
