The text on the Assassin's kimono says: "I'm not wearing underwear or a bra right now." Approved by the Comics Code Authority, who apparently do not speak Japanese.
Gru: You are a beautiful woman... Do you speak Spanish?
Miss Hattie: Do I look like I speak Spanish?
Gru: You have a face... como un burro.note
Miss Hattie: Do I look like I speak Spanish?
Gru: You have a face... como un burro.note
A hidden message in a foreign language. This ostensibly makes these messages available only to bilingual and international audiences. The extra can be anything from a plot-relevant point to additional dialogue (often used to demonstrate that they've Shown Their Work with the language) to a random gag. The opposite of As Long as It Sounds Foreign (where a foreign language is used carelessly on the hopes no one will notice and sounds ridiculous or implausible if a viewer can understand the tongue).
As you may have guessed, this can be a very clever way of Getting Crap Past the Radar. In fact, Hollywood censors once demanded English translations of any part of a screenplay written in a foreign language (whether that language was real or made-up) precisely to thwart this, since subtitles traditionally weren't used in American films even when a character was speaking a language other than English.
If the word still makes sense in another way then it's also a Multiple Reference Pun. When it occurs in a song, it's a Multilingual Song. For poems and songs that use this through rhyme, it can be a Bilingual Rhyme.
This, of course, not only applies to actual languages, but also the various fictional languages that have full-blown lexicons and can technically be translated — Quenya and Sindarin, Klingon, D'ni from the Myst verse, et cetera.
See also No Translation Necessary.
A Dog Named "Perro" and Bilingual Backfire are subtropes.
Example Subpages:
Individual examples:
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Advertising
- A variation in a long-running Apartments.com campaign with its fictional spokesman Brad Bellflower; bell is homophonic with the French word for beautiful (belle), suggesting his surname means "beautiful flower". A synonym for that phrase would be "gold bloom" — pronounced the same as the surname of the actor who plays Bellflower.
- Discover Card's "Peggy" campaign featured a Romanian-born actor as Peggy. The opening of the "Please Hold
" commercial has Peggy speaking in rapid-fire Romanian. He is apparently saying something along the lines of "te cauta pe tine nenicule", which translates roughly to "is looking/calling for you, dude." Peggy provides poor customer service at a call center.
- A "Bi-Dialectal Bonus": in Australian Aboriginal English, the word "deadly" has positive connotations (similar to the white English slang senses of "wicked" or "mean"). This meant that the public health campaign "Deadly Choices" could use sentences such as "Quitting smoking is a deadly choice", which got the message across to the target audience, while deliberately baffling anyone not in the know.
Animation
- In the Chinese series Flower Angel, An'an's mother is named is named Lìlì (莉莉), an approximation of the English word lily in Chinese. The Chinese word for lily is bǎihé (百合).
- Lamput:
- The episode "Bank Robbery" has Specs Doc thrown into a jail cell which has Hindi writing on its walls, "वक़्त की क़ैद में जिंदगी है मगर चंद घड़ियाँ यही है जो आज़ाद हैं". It roughly translates to "Life is imprisoned by time, but these are the few moments that are free" in English.
- The episode "Martial Art" has a scene where, right before Lamput fights Specs Doc and Skinny Doc martial arts film-style, Specs Doc speaks a line of his usual gibberish which is accompanied by Chinese subtitles, "我們在胡說八道". The subtitles translate to "We're talking nonsense".
- In the Season 3 episode "Reward", Specs Doc and Skinny Doc rob a bank. The bank has a sign that is in Latin, "Pecunia emere non beatitudo"; this means "Money cannot buy happiness".
- Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf:
- The wolves' Chinese names end in "太狼" ("Tàiláng"). This is a pun on the Japanese language. "太狼" ("Tàiláng") and "太郎" ("Tàiláng") are homophones in the Chinese language, and "太郎" is also the Japanese name Tarō, meaning "the first son". Japanese names can appear aggressive in the Chinese language, and this fits the evil wolves.
- Brother Tai has a bilingual Punny Name in the original Chinese version — it's "泰哥" or "Tai Guh", which sounds like the English word "tiger".
Anime & Manga
- In the anime for Assassin's Pride, in the episodes set in the magic library, some books are shown as having text written in real runes (with some typos) in English. Some of its instructions that are pretty much as translated by a character, but one of the magic books contains a text titled "Little Red Riding Hood"; rather than being the story, it's some text describing and discussing it. Since the anime is otherwise in Japanese, English texts seen elsewhere in plain writing could be counted too. These all have the feel of filler you're not supposed to look at too closely, like the pages that all contain the same text in Episode 8.
- Chainsaw Man: There are some untranslated dialogue and notes peppered throughout the series. For instance, Makima's Pre-Mortem One-Liner to Quanxi "A corpse is talking." is actually an Ironic Echo to a line Pingtsi said earlier in Chinese.
- In episode 10 of the second season of CLANNAD, the protagonist Tomoya wears a sweatshirt with the german caption Neue Wellenote . May be an example of Foreshadowing, since he'll later name his daughter Ushio, which translates into tides.
- Cowboy Bebop has plenty of those, from texts in foreign languages all over the place to Ed's father's name being "Excuse me, check please" in Turkish.
- Crossplay Love: Otaku x Punk: Shimazaki's cosplay troupe is called "Men", both because they're all male and because "men" is Japanese for "noodles" and each one is nicknamed after a type of noodle (Ramen, Soumen, etc...)
- In Dragon Ball GT, the names of the evil Dragons are all based on the Dragon Ball they sprang from, which is written in Chinese in the original Japanese version. They're in the form of "_ Xīng Lóng" ("[#]-Star Dragon"), rather than "Shén Lóng" ("God Dragon").
- At one point in Genshiken, Angela and Ohno are talking about an explicit scene in a Yaoi manga in English. The Japanese subs are censored but their dialogue is not.
- Many of the character names in Gundam Wing are or are derived from numbers in German, French, Latin or Chinese. These include (but are not limited to) Colonel "Treize" ("13" in French), "Quatre" ("Four" in French), Colonel "Zechs" (homophone for "6" in German), Lady Une (similar to the French or Latin "One"), and "Wu" Fei ("5" in Chinese), among a great many others.
- The English dub of Hellsing Ultimate has once instance of this in the third episode when Seras is escorting the Japanese tourists, the tourists have been redubbed in Japanese, and are apparently saying very rude things about the English staff working on the episode.
- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
- Phantom Blood: Early on, Dio claims to be a God in all but name. "Dio" is Italian for God.
- Stardust Crusaders: Holly Kujo insists on being called Seiko despite her birth name being Holly, to Joseph's dismay. She claims (as the author believed at the time) both names mean the same thing, even though Seiko means "holy child", and "holly" and "holy" are completely different English words. But if this is your biggest problem with JoJo, you're having a good day.
- Golden Wind: Italian phrases come up now and then; The Boss' messages to his capos and Giorno's subconscious writing on the plane, for a couple of examples. In the anime, they are fully shown on screen, so those who know the language could just read it from there. However, it gets subverted because the characters will just read it out loud in Japanese, making its contents more readily available for the audience.
- All of the French in Chapter 20 of Kaguya-sama: Love Is War (and its anime counterpart in Episode 4) is untranslated to reflect Shirogane's lack of familiarity with the language.note
- Neon Genesis Evangelion:
- In the North American dub, Asuka holds an entire telephone conversation in German in the background of one scene; there are allegedly several in-jokes in her dialogue for German speakers who ignore the foreground action to concentrate on her.
- The title itself is an example. It is possible to predict the ending. Word for word, it translates to "New Beginning Gospel", or it can be re-arranged slightly to become "Gospel of the New Beginning".
- In Overlord, viewers that know basic Spanish will realize something is up with Ninya from his name alone. It's phonetically similar to niña, meaning "girl".
- Puella Magi Madoka Magica has German phrases ridden all over the episodes. Most of it are quotes of Goethe's Faust.
- Sgt. Frog: In the Japanese version, Tamama is filled with 嫉妬/しっと, pronounced "shitto" and meaning jealousy/envy. He makes some sort of energy ball with his feelings and shooting it towards someone who angered him. The ball never reaches its destination though, and usually returns..
- Which on one occasion led to the use of Gratuitous English which led to the logical conclusion.◊
- Which on one occasion led to the use of Gratuitous English which led to the logical conclusion.
- The pre-opening credits sequence in Slayers Revolution has a pun on the Japanese possessive particle no (の in hiragana) and the English and Spanish word no: the captions on the wanted poster for Lina are "AKUMA NO MIMI"note , "AKUMA NO KUCHI"note , and "NO BUST".
- In the original Japanese version of Sonic X, Sonic peppers his speech with a lot of English phrases, owing to his VA Jun'ichi Kanemaru being a part-time English teacher. While Sonic also uses English phrases in the Japanese versions of the games, Sonic X has English phrases in aplomb.
- In Episode 11 of Sunday Without God, a newspaper article in French reveals that Alice was the student who died, which Ai doesn't learn until the next episode.
- Super Dimension Fortress Macross: The three Zentradi spies are named Warera, Loli, and Conda, which put together reads as, "We have a Lolita Complex" in Japanese... whether or not they actually do is never confirmed, though they DO wind up being avid fans of Lynn Minmay.
- Tamagotchi Friends: In episode 27a of Tamagotchi! (2009, the Tamagotchi king of the past asks Lovelitchi if mirrors are popular in the future, leading to him making a pun that the future would then be the "mira-i." "Mirai" is Japanese for future, and "mira" sounds a lot like "mirror."
- In Tokyo Shinobi Squad, En has a habit of greeting people in his native Thai and Jin slips into one of the 23 other languages he knows when he's feeling flippant with his superiors.
- Voltes V: Earth is antagonized by an aliens from the Boazanian Empire. "Boazan" is the Japanese pronunciation of the French word "Voisin", which means "neighbor". It also happens to be a Fantasy Counterpart Culture to Medieval France.
- In Welcome to the NHK, the main character prances through half the series wearing sweatshirts with the mysterious letters XYN -– a corruption of Cyrillic ХУЙ (huĭ), which happens to be one of the few absolutely taboo words in Russian, literally the male penis, but also ranging in meaning from "fuck off" to "cunt" (the insult, not the matching organ) depending on context.
- Yamada-kun and the Seven Witches: Because of having lived abroad, Sarushima thinks in English, so any Japanese reader without at least some knowledge of English language won't been able to tell what she's thinking in chapter 107 — which is a funny little Call-Back to the first time Yamada met her
- YuYu Hakusho: Possibly doubling as a Stealth Pun, Yusuke Urameshi's Spirit Gun is called "Rei Gun" in the original Japanese, and pronounced the same way as "ray gun".
Art
- Gothic Times: A couple of the pieces' titles are in another language. "Bandito" translates as 'bandit' in Italian, while "El Muerto" is 'the dead one' in Spanish.
Comedy
- Bill Bailey also invokes this through a discussion about foreign ambulance sirens. Needless to say, he abuses the opportunity to hide some things in it:
Attention! Nous sommes blessés! note
Nous avons un homme; il s'appelle Jean-Michel, sa jambe est cassé. note
Avec une jeune fille; elle s'appelle Gisèle. C'est si belle. note
Ils ont montés dans un arbre pour faire l’amour. Il a adopté la position misionnaire; c'est populaire. note
Il est tombé. Sa jambe est cassé. Attention! note - Finlay Christie: Most of the foreign dialogue in "when they go to a foreign country in a hollywood film" is genuine Urdu; however, none of it is directly subtitled, leaving it up to the viewers to translate it.
- Gabriel Iglesias has a routine about authentic and non-authentic Hawaiian luaus. When describing the non-authentic one, he describes a tour guide who is actually from Oregon and a bus driver who actually is from Hawaii, who calls her "my little punanny". Punanny means "vagina" in Jamaican patois.
- Eddie Izzard, being fluent in a few languages, does an entire section on the Definite Article DVD about learning foreign languages by tape cassette. She even ends the sections by promising it's hilarious if you're bi-lingual.
- Richard Jeni had a bit where he talked about late night commercials, especially for lawyers. He calls the lawyer in his bit Marvin A Gonif. Gonif is a Yiddish word for a crook/cheat/dishonest person, adding an extra layer onto the joke.
Comic Books
- In Anya's Ghost Anya's mom makes syrniki, cheese dumplings/pancakes, for breakfast. They're referred to as сы́рники in text.
- In the English translation of Asterix, all the French wordplay is replaced with equivalent English wordplay, but all the Latin wordplay remains in Latin. One of the main joke templates involves three recently defeated characters each making a pun on the situation, with one usually in Latin.
- Be Prepared:
- Fittingly, the services at the Russian Orthodox church are in Russian. Vera is reciting the Lord's Prayer and gets grabbed and scolded by a elderly woman for fidgeting during it.
- The first song the scouts sing at camp, "Be Prepared", drops the title of the book though it's all sang in Russian. It's a song about how scouts, as Russian expats, should be ready to defend Russia. (Vera is not prepared as she doesn't have her songbook to sing along, having thrown it away — the cover of the book says "Songs," but she has the reading skills of a five year old in Russian.)
- The outdoor bathrooms — called Hollywoods — have Bathroom Stall Graffiti written in Russian.
- Fantastic Four #542 includes Ben Grimm's adventures in France (his response to the super hero Civil War (2006)) as well as his attempts at speaking the French language (specifically, trying to say "It's clobberin' time" in French. He's less than successful).
Thing: That just means il est temps de foutre!note
Anais: Pardon?
Thing: What?
Anais: You said "foutre". I think you meant to say, "Il est temps de battre!" note
Thing: Oh. I guess I got excited.
Anais: apparently so. - In the Lucky Luke album Le Grand Duc, the gratuitous-looking Cyrillic script is actually real Russian, and contains meaningful sentences. For example, the anarchist assassin is heard to yell Неудача! (Fail!) every time his evil plots go pear-shaped.
- French comic Nelson has a few panels involving dog food called "Doggy style". Yeah, really. Most French just know what "dog" means.
- The alien language that the moonies speak in Saga is actually Esperanto, so the entire series is filled with this.
- In Spider-Man vs. Wolverine, Spidey is in Germany, heading to the Berlin Wall, and spots a couple of German police and doesn't understand them.
Spider-Man: [thinking] Shop talk. Counting the number of people they've shot trying to go over the wall!
Guard 1: <I told her she's crazy! My mother's strudel got an award! It's fantastic! My old lady can't bake. Mankind would be better off without her strudel.>
Guard 2: <Fritz, I would just tell her.>
- As well as the costume he wears in Germany labeled "Die Spinne".
- The Star Wars Tales one-shot "Forse Fiction" has the menu that Yoda is reading written in Trade Federation Basic. The translation is noted below:
IF YOU HAVE TAKEN THE TIME TO TRANSLATE THIS ENTIRE MENU PLEASE TRY TO DEVOTE AN EQUAL AMOUNT OF TIME TO MORE IMPORTANT THINGS LIKE EXERCISE OR GOOD CONVERSATIONS AMONG FRIENDS OR LOOKING AT SUNSETS OR TELLING THAT SPECIAL SOMEONE HOW MUCH YOU LOVE THEM. THIS MESSAGE IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE WRITER THE CHILDRENS [sic] TELEVISION WORKSHOP AND THE LETTER O. BY THE WAY MICHELLE AND DREA AND SHELLY AND CHRIS AND EVINRUDE I LOVE YOU ALL. WRITER KEVIN MARANGONnote SOCIALIST KARL MARX.
- Ultimate Marvel:
- The Ultimates: The Nazi soldiers speak in German, not English (except when they talk to Cap directly). When Captain America storms into the Nazi base, one of the Nazi generals shouts "Mein gott! Erschiesst Es! Erschiesst Es doch endlich!" (german for "My God! Shoot it! Shoot it already!")
- Ultimate X-Men (2001): An Arab soldier, the last remaining one, see that Wolverine has just killed his companion. With an Oh, Crap! face, he shouts "Ibin alqahba!". The translation says "*[censored]", for good reason.
- A Viz character named "Sweary Mary" was challenged to get an obscenity on the front cover of the comic. She managed this by arranging the bunting for a village fete, including a set of unusual flags. In the final frame, everyone seems happy except for a passing sailor who is slapping his head in horrified disbelief, as he is the only one (apart from Mary) to be aware that a string of pretty flags are spelling out an obscene phrase note . Fortunately for those without naval training, a feature further inside the comic explained the signal-flag alphabet.
- Weapon Hex: A variant. In the beginning of Issue 1, the blue-skinned humanoid being sacrificed speaks in the comic's only instance of untranslated Lost Tongues. What it says translates as "PLEASE…PLEASE NO…"
- Wonder Woman, The Legend of Wonder Woman: While most languages get translated into English, the French is left as is.
- Zombillénium has an in-universe Latin case. While blessing a dead woman who was actually turned into a vampire, the priest (who helps covering The Masquerade) says "free us from eternal death" in Latin. The vampire director laughs and translates for the reader.
Fan Works
- Abraxas (Hrodvitnon):
- There are bits of French over the story from Vivienne and at one point from MaNi/Elder Brother, which the reader can translate on their own.
- Translating what the Japanese letter in the Chapter 14 Nightmare Sequence means adds to the Nightmare Fuel.
- The Chapter 16 poster has an Elder Futhark message inserted for the readers to themselves translate.
- All Guardsmen Party: The named Space Marines in Tyranid Acquisition Experts are named Rubram, Gravis, and Rebus — loosely translated from Latin into "Red", "Serious" and "Matters", or more colloquially, "Ruddy Serious Business".
- With the expectation that the shuttle pilot would be used, he was named Tunicae — so that the Marines (Gravis and Rebus) meant "Serious Business", and the Scouts (Rubram and Tunicae) meant "Red Shirt."
- In the Alternate Tail Series, the spells of Holy Scriopture, the magic that Levy gains halfway through Part 1 are written in Irish Gaelic. Even the second part of the magic's name is Irish for "Scripture."
- From the Ask Crapplejack blog: When Applejack arrives in Falkath with the Merchant from Perseth, he approaches the customs agent at the docks claiming to sell 3,000 metaunits of concentrated malus domestica, to which the agent replies "What a vile fluid, however legal." Malus Domestica is actually the name for the common apple.
- All parts of Austraeoh are named in old norse, if you're willing to stretch your suspension of disbelief a bit to make it work. Austraeoh is "East-Horse" (Aust is norse for East, Eoh is old english for horse), Eljunbyro is "Endurance (re)born", Innavedr is "Accomplish wind", Odrsjot is "Frantic companionship", Urohringr means "discordant ring" (uro-discordant, hringr-ring). Yaerfaerda comes from gær — fœða, or "yesterday-to give birth" or "foal yesterday" in-universe. Ynanhluutr is from innan-hlutr — "Inner Purpose"
- In the KanColle story Blizzard of the Red Castle, almost every single chapter name is a pun based on the English translation of the key characters' involved Japanese names. The title itself also hides the source of the fic's tension. In Japanese, the fic's title would be "Akagi no Fubuki."
- After the main events of the Batman / Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fic City Hopping, Leonardo portals into Bane's cell so he can test pit some of his Spanish insults on him. Dick Grayson and Barbara Gordon, who are watching the footage, laugh out loud at some of them:
Leonardo: Entonces, ¿cómo se siente perder contra Batman todos los días?note
Bane: ¡Cállate, cosa estúpida! ¡No pierdo todos los días!note
Leonardo: Ah, cierto. Pierdes cada hora. Lástima que no puedas perder peso tan a menudo como pierdes peleas.note
Bane: ¡Tan pronto como salir de esta jaula, te romperé!note
Leonardo: Por favor, he conocido cerdos más aterradores que tú.note
Bane: ¡Cállate, tortuga tonta!note
Leonardo: No eres tan bueno con los insultos, ¿eh? Está bien, he tratado con muchos villanos estúpidos.note
Bane: ¡CALLARSE LA BOCA!note - In Chrysalis Visits The Hague, many chapter titles are Latin legal phrases, and pony magistrate Lexy Fori's name is derived from “law of the forum”.
- In Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Pizza Problems, the name of the character Mr. Harinezumi is Japanese for "Mr. Hedgehog", the prototypical name of Sonic the Hedgehog, who Mr. Harinezumi references frequently.
- Mirabel's insult to the Berkians in The Dragon and the Butterfly, when translated, is not family friendly.
- A Drop of Poison: Many of the (Japanese) character names, especially of the clones, have double meanings.
- The five-girl "Konoha Fashion Ninja" clique are Suzuki Fumichi, Mori Nishi, Hayabashi Asano, Okita Mihoshi, and Kimura Ringo — whose names contain "ichi, ni, san, shi, go", ie counting from 1 to 5 in Japanese.
- The clones who enroll at the Ninja Academy choose the names Ariko, "ant child", and Muremaru, "incarnate swarm", both references to their nature as part of an immense horde of clones.
- The clones' merchant network starts trading under the name "Kuroneko", くろねこ, which is normally read as kuro-neko, "black cat". However, if it is written in Romaji, it could instead be seen as kuron-eko, "clone echo".
- Emma the Vampire Slayer: In "Careful", the focused family's surname is Ingwer, which is German for "ginger". The family is based on Once Upon a Time's version of Hansel and Gretel and the story's Gingerbread House.
- While most of Asuka's German in Going Another Way is subtitled, some is not. Translating it manually can give some interesting insights.
- In Harry Potter and the Boiling Isles, Ron’s Swedish uncle Björn Weasley always said ”Hellre en rövare i poolen än en polare i röven”. It’s a crude Swedish play on words, but directly translated it means ”Better a robber in the pool than a pal in the ass”.
- A mysterious entity appears on the Marauder's Map in Harry Is A Dragon, And That's Okay, with a listed name of βασίλισσα. Translating it from Greek into English just gives "Empress", which confuses Harry. However, transliterate it, and you get basilissa.
- Inglorious Bosh'tets (a Mass Effect fanfic) has a lot of them, all in Finnish. There's an alcoholic quarian named Juodaan'Viina ("let's drink booze"), a ship called the Kamala Kohtalo ("horrible fate"), a mineral scanner named the Perkele5000 ("perkele" means "devil", and is generally used as a profanity)... and the list goes on.
- In King of the Monsters, one of Godzilla's many titles is the "Jaeger von Jaegers", which is (grammatically incorrect) German for "Hunter of Hunters" (It should read something like '(Der) Jäger der Jäger' instead). It's doubly meaningful, considering that it is a Fusion Fic between Godzilla and Pacific Rim.
- The Last Seidr: For a good portion of the fic, SHIELD's agents are trying to figure out exactly who (and what) Harry and Fawkes are. As a subtle test, Agent Romanov speaks to him in Russian note . It's implied that the Sorting Hat translated for Harry, as he thanks her in English.
- Lionheart:
- Draco, naturally enough for his aristocratic upbringing, speaks French, but the author typically declines to translate his conversations with Beauxbatons students, leaving it to the enterprising reader to find the extra jokes.
Fleur's mouth thinned. "Personally, I do not like to win by cheating," she said. "But perhaps zhis eez because I am French."
Draco narrowed his eyes. "Votre dossier suggère que vous n'aimez pas du tout gagner."note - Viktor Krum's exchange in Bulgarian with his brother (who is mocking Viktor about his interest in Hermione) is similarly left untranslated.
- Draco, naturally enough for his aristocratic upbringing, speaks French, but the author typically declines to translate his conversations with Beauxbatons students, leaving it to the enterprising reader to find the extra jokes.
- Miraculous Ladybug fanfiction by lordMartiya often has Lila utter phrases in Italian (first language of both her and the author) when frustrated, usually for comedic effect but once, in Lila and the Anger Management Class, to reveal her actual opinion of someone — and of course that's the one time one of the people present understands Italian.
- The Mandela Magazine: The video changing Cesar's surname from Torres to Castle has an explanation: Torres is Spanish for "towers", specifically castle towers.
- Menburen no Tsuinzu, a Christmas crossover video between Kingdom Hearts and Ratchet & Clank, has its official name in Japanese, which is translated as "Twins of the Membrane". It does have an alternate name in English, called Twinsane in the Membrane.
- The Naked Jedi: Sarza’s offshoot of the Jedi Order call themselves the "Nue Jedi." "Nue" is French for "naked" and sounds very similar to "new," thus they are both "New Jedi" and "Nude Jedi."
- No Fate, Only Family: When Luz ends up meeting a young Caleb and Philip, most of their lines are in untranslated Dutch. Translating their lines reveals Caleb had mistaken Luz for the Grim Reaper and asked her to save Philip even if it meant taking Caleb's soul, saying it's not safe for Philip to be around him because of "him", referring to Bill Cipher possessing him.
- Optimus on Earth: The members of the Banerjee-Patel-Suzuki family will all start venting in Hindi if especially ticked off. Optimus will do this as well. Most of these vents contain funny insults.
Amaya: (when a criminal escapes) Mujhe is par yakeen nahin ho raha! Main kasam khaata hoon, jab main use phir se dekhoonga to use joote se maaroonga!note
- Exaggerated in Paradoxus: it's written in Spanish, but from time to time the characters talk in Icelandic (Domino's in-universe native language) or German, hum songs in English, and thank the fans of their band in French. A good portion of the epigraphs at the start of the chapters are written in either of those languages. Perks of having several authors, huh?
- The Pieces Lie Where They Fell: Multiple characters have a tendency to slip into their native language — Spanish/Burroñeso, Greek, and on one occasion, German/Hosstrian. Translations are provided on the subpage.
- There is so much Dutch used in the Pokémon fanfic Pokémon × Nimja: Play the Game that can only be understood by people who actually know or speak Dutch. But then again, it's no wonder, as the fanfic is based on the hypnosis files of Nimja, who is Dutch and speaks both Dutch and English fluently. Among the much more notable examples:
- The very first words spoken by the tragic Mewtwo antagonist HyPN0se towards anyone are "Dus... jij bent degene die ze Nimja noemen?" (So... you are the one they call Nimja?) Nimja responds that yes, he is, and then asks (also in Dutch) if Dutch is the only language he speaks.
- HyPN0se in general has dialogue consisting of about 50% English and 50% Dutch, though it's not until later that we find out it's because his mother forbade him from ever speaking English in her household (according to her, it is "de taal van de barbaren" — the language of the barbarians — and should not be spoken).
- An entire chapter ends up being a huge example of this trope. Said chapter, "The Night Comes Down," involves the main core group of Nimja, OGiNiM, HyDrO, and Slang visiting a creepy-looking house inhabited by a group of people referred to only as “The Spoken”; the name was apparently given because they are not seen, but they are talked about. Upon further examination, however, the group realizes the real reason for the title: the "people" are actually ghosts that haunt the house. The word for "ghosts" in Dutch? Spoken. The entire thing was derived from one of Nimja's live files in which he relates a story about a book containing the same pun. As Nimja himself states in the chapter when he gets his "Eureka!" Moment:
Nimja: How could I have forgotten the pun of my childhood?
- In Pokéumans, transformees often go into a coma and wake up once their transformation has completed a week later. In one of the Recursive Fanfiction spinoffs, this effect was given the medical name "Metamorphic Comatose", or "Segnis scriptor" — which means "lazy author".
- Pontypandy Theatre: In "Sleeping Beauty", the kingdom's name is Nova Suecia, which is Latin for "New Sweden". This was chosen because the actors playing Sleeping Beauty and her parents are all Swedish (that being the Blomgren family).
- The Danny Phantom and Kim Possible crossover, A Possible Encounter for a Phantom features a Prehistoric Monster called a Terakon. It's name is a merge of two Greek words, Teras and Drakon, respectively meaning "monster" and "dragon". It's a fitting name.
- In PreCure in a Nutshell, Poisony's parody name is Fishfish. The French word for "fish" is "poisson", which is spelled very similar to "Poisony".
- The Metal Gear fanfic Quiet and the Dimensional Traveler (Timeline A) feature a lot of bilingual bonus in various languages, from single words to entire sentences. One of them is peculiar because since one of the character don't understand it, finds it disgusting, while is real meaning is "My heart belong only to you" in Polish.
- Ruby Pair:
- The meat-obsessed alien bees in "Beefus Megabombus" are called Carne Bees, and are from the Viande Nebula. "Carne" and "Viande" are the Spanish and French words for "meat" respectively.
- Dib curses in Spanish at one point in "Frosting the 13th", a reference to Jhonen Vasquez's affirmation that the Membranes are of Mexican descent.
- Shen vs. Kai: Hei Yinying's name - Mandarin for Dark Cloudy Shadow.
- The Big Bad in Sluagh is The Diabhal Dubh, explained In-Story to mean 'The Black Devil' in Gaelic. What isn't explained is that Dubh can also mean several other things, including 'Hidden'. Given his nature, this is very appropriate.
- While the Gratuitous Japanese in Tales of the Undiscovered Swords is translated and subtitled, only by fully understanding those dialogues can one see the various Japanese Pronouns, honorifics and modes of speech given to the OC swords.
- Tangled Up With T Urtles: Along with Maximus, the horses the Turtles ride are named Caballo, Pferd, and Cheval. Other than Maximus, these all translate to "horse" in other languages (Spanish, German, and French, respectively).
- "To Absent Friends": The USS Bajor's Pretentious Latin Motto, "Morituri Nolumus Mori"? Not so pretentious. It's a Discworld reference: "We who are about to die don't want to."
- On top of being raised speaking English, Rasha in Martyshka refers to Milla as "Mamãe" (Portuguese for "Mom") and Sasha "Vati" (German for "Dad").
- Fortune_Lover_(TGS Beta)(SARU_rip)[T+Eng0.75_Sincere].zip: The author never revealed the identity of "Sincere," but it's strongly implied to Atsuko Sasaki, owing to the kanji used as "Atsu" of "Atsuko" can mean sincerity.
- A Certain Droll Hivemind:
- In order to fit in, Misaka-11111 takes on the moniker 御坂唯 (Misaka Yui). The joke here being that whilst the family name is identical to canon ToAru's Mikoto, the character "Yui" is a homonym for "just". In other words, Misaka-11111 is Just Misaka.
- An alternative translation is "Only". By this translation the 11111th Misaka is the "only" Misaka.
Films — Animation
- BoBoiBoy: The Movie: The alien cephalopod that the Tengkotak give Adu Du and Probe to feed is called "Kurita", which means "octopus".
- The Castle of Cagliostro features the unusual case of a bilingual bonus based on English in a foreign film. Miyazaki apparently used gooto (Gothic) as an adjective for the counterfeit bills and the lettering on Clarice's ring in conjunction with the goat as an Arc Symbol relating to the Cagliostro royal family as a stealth pun on "goat" — an English word that sounds absolutely nothing like the Japanese word for goat, "yagi". Since puns don't translate well, this led to "Gothic" getting Lost in Translation as early translations of the movie called them "Goat bills" and "Goat lettering" (or "Capran" in the English dub).
- Despicable Me: Gru tries to woo Miss Hattie by telling her she has a face "Como un burro." And it works... until the next time they see each other and she's bought a dictionary. She proceeds to hit him with it. For those who don't get it, he said she has a face like a donkey (in the Latin American Spanish dub, instead he says she looks like a tololoche).
- Frozen (2013): During Elsa's coronation, the bishop gives a speech in Old Norse:
Bishop: Sem hón heldr inum helgum eignum ok krýnd í þessum helga stað ek té fram fyrir yðr... translation Queen Elsa of Arendelle.
- A more subtle one appears in Hercules: Phil tells Hercules "Two words: I! Am! Retired!" At first this seems like just a simple miscounting gag, but if you translate the phrase "I am retired" into Greek (the film being set in Greece), it becomes “Είμαι συνταξιούχος”, which is two words.
- The Hunchback of Notre Dame: "Hellfire", Frollo's show stopping song of guiltless condemnation, is counterpointed by Ominous Latin Chanting — specifically, as anyone familiar with Catholic mass might know, the Act of Contrition.
- The LEGO Movie has a small but clever bilingual pun. Lord Business' doomsday device is called the Tentacle Arm Kragle Outside Sprayer, or TAKOS (the 'S' is silent), which looks like a bunch of giant tentacles. "Tako" in Japanese means "octopus".
- In The Lion King (1994), many of the characters' Meaningful Names are descriptors in Swahili: e.g., "Simba" means "lion," "Mufasa" means "king," "Pumbaa" means "to be foolish," "Rafiki" means "friend," etc.
- Mulan: Multiple:
- When Mulan disguises herself as a man to take her father's place in the army, as she approaches Khan, the horse is noticeably agitated at the sight of this male stranger until Mulan said something to calm him down. Although Mulan's words are drowned out by the epic music playing in the background, look at her lips: she's saying, "shi wo, shi wo" ("It's me, it's me") to the horse.
- Mulan has to give a male name when she joins the army. Stressed by the situation, the only thing she can come up with is "Ping". It means "peace". Furthermore, she is registered under her real family name "Hua", so her full name (Hua Ping) translates to "flowerpot", slang for a homosexual man or a useless prettyboy. It might also be the Chinese word for "soldier" (Bing in Pinyin, but pronounced Ping), which would be logical given that Mulan was panicking and picked the first word she could think of after looking around.
- Chi Fu's name is a pun on the Chinese word for "to bully".
- Chien Po's chant while trying to calm Yao down is a Buddhist prayer.
- Rango:
- When the hawk drops the bottle with Rango inside and it lands on Rock-Eye the Toad, he yells "Madre de Dios!" which translates to "Mother of God". This is not particularly noteworthy — until he follows it up by yelling "I'm going to strangle your huevos!" (huevos being literally "eggs" but also slang for testicles.)
- The mariachi owls talking about how Rango will lose his "cojones". Also his nuts.
- One of the buildings in Brooklyn in The Super Mario Bros. Movie is a restaurant with a Duck Hunt duck for its logo/mascot. The restaurant is named Chasse au Canard, which is "Duck Hunt" in French.
- Turning Red:
- The Chinese couplet on either side of the doorway into the Lee family temple (江流百川同源，樹發千枝共根) reads: From the same source streams become a hundred rivers, from the same roots trees grow a thousand branches. This has been described as basically, "live long and prosper" but in Chinese.
- The one on either side of the doorway into Sun Yee Hall (天和物諧為善，崇德尚義至孝) reads: Heaven and the mortal realm in harmony begets goodness, revering morals and valuing righteousness leads the way to filial piety. This fits well with the fact the building is dedicated to honouring Mei's ancestor Sun Yee whose spirit can be found in the astral realm.
- Up: Dug is telling Russell to stop playing with his collar (in the same sentence) in several languages, though he gets cut off in Japanese.
Films — Live-Action
- The 40-Year-Old Virgin: When Paula, the store manager, reminisces about the time when she lost her virginity to a Hispanic boy, she remembers that he used to sing her a song, which he told her was a "traditional lullaby." Turns out that the lyrics are nowhere as romantic as she actually thinks they are. It translates to: "When I get to my room, I can't find anything. Where are you going in such a rush? To the soccer game."
- (500) Days of Summer: When Tom and Summer are riding in a car and Tom asks Summer what they are doing (i.e. where their relationship is going) a song in French is playing on the radio, "Quelqu'un m'a dit" by Carla Bruni. The chorus of this song is Quelqu'un m'a dit que tu m'aimait encore, Somebody told me that you still loved me. During a lull in the conversation what is heard of the song translates to "somebody told me that destiny doesn't care about us. That it gives us nothing and promises us everything. It's said that happiness is within reach so we reach out our hand and found ourselves fools"
- Ace Ventura, possibly. Lois Einhorn, with the Unsettling Gender-Reveal, has a last name that means "unicorn" and literally means "one horn" in German. One guess what "horn" that is supposed to be.
- Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy: The Mexican restaurant is called "Escupimos en su Alimento." This is Spanish for "we spit in your food."
- Around the World in 80 Days (2004): The Chinese man tied up in the "jail" is actually yelling "my butt really itches!" in Chinese.
- Austin Powers: Dr. Evil says that the French would say that something has a certain "I don't know what." Dr. Evil is admitting that he doesn't know what the French phrase is, but the phrase he's trying to use, "Je ne sais quoi", actually means exactly that: "I don't know what."
- The Big Lebowski: One scene prominently features a cover of Hotel California performed by the Gipsy Kings in Spanish. If you actually know Spanish, you’ll find the translation is hilariously awful; it tries so hard to be literal that it ends up making the already surreal lyrics incomprehensible — in other words, it’s pretty much a microcosm of the movie itself.
- The Black Cat, features a stock-phrase-derived satanic invocation offering unintended laughs for anyone who understands Latin. Cum grano salis indeed! For those who don't speak Latin: it means "with a grain of salt."
- Black Dynamite: The "Chinese" Viet Cong child tells Black Dynamite that he's full of shit.
- Borat is an English hidden-camera film about a fictional Kazakh reporter and his producer filming what the public thinks is a "documentary", and they frequently converse with each other in Kazakh; however, no actual Kazakh language is heard in the film, since Borat's actor is speaking Hebrew and his producer Armenian. All the text in the film is in Russian and even then occasionally misspelled. However, the sequel features actual, accurate Kazakh text.
- The Brothers Bloom: Diamond Dog compares the Blooms' lives to navigating the labyrinth. In the next scene, the large neon sign in Cyrillic script behind him reveals that the bar they were drinking in was called "The Labyrinth."
- In Cannibal! The Musical, the "Indians" (who are clearly Japanese) call their tribe The Nihonjin – "Nihonjin" is Japanese for "Japanese people". Some of their dialogue is this too – apparently there's a line that loosely translates to "this movie is really stupid!". And then there's bilingual bonus for those who know sign language: Humphrey makes some strange hand gestures while claiming to translate for the "Indians" at one point, and these gestures actually mean "Jesus Christ is dead".
- Cheyenne Autumn featured cast members from the Navajo Nation. While the lines are subtitled for a serious conversation, they're actually making various ribald and obscene jokes about the director, crew, and various non-Navajo cast members. Navajo theater patrons cracked up.
- In Confessions of a Shopaholic, main character Rebecca Bloomwood spices up her resume by claiming, falsely, that she's fluent in Finnish. After she gets the job, her skills are put to test in a cocktail party with an actual Finnish person. Not ready to admit the truth, Rebecca solves the situation by slapping the man in front of everybody and claiming that men like him are the reason she left Finland. What the man was actually saying is not exactly abusive: "Hi! So nice to meet another Finn in here! Ever since I've been here in Americ—" *slap*
- In Cube 2: Hypercube, the true identity of the hacker "Alex Trusk" is hinted at for anyone familiar with Slavic diminutive names, since Alex is actually Sasha, a female character whose name is the diminutive form of Alexander/Alexandra.
- Viewers who know German know that Doug's bedmate Gita in the opening sequence of The Cutting Edge is actually saying "No alarm" when she supposedly echoes him saying "Nine alarm". She's actually saying "Nein" (German for "no"). (The backstory on this moment being that Doug is in a panic at having overslept and confused as to why, as he set his alarm for nine o'clock. But since "nine" and "nein" sound exactly alike, she thought he was saying "No alarm" and either didn't set it or turned it off, thinking he didn't want it).
- Dead Man uses Cree and Blackfoot. There's something insulting in Cree.
- Don't Look: While Kelley and Sherri Baby are with the group at their Thanksgiving dinner, Lorena and Sebastian have a conversation with each other in Spanish, where we hear them call the two "Puerco", which is Spanish for "pig".
- In Easy A, Olive Penderghast is reading The Scarlet Letter in school, and acknowledging that her life is slowly turning into the novel. At one point she goes to see a foreign film, but can't read the German title, so she has no idea what movie she's about to see. The title is Der Scharlachrote Buchstabe, which of course means The Scarlet Letter.
- In EuroTrip, at least one German singer in the background belts out a song whose only lyric is "Du kannst mich nichts verstehen" ("You can't understand me). Which is true, if you don't speak German. There's also a kind of subversion on the ladies' nude beach in France – two girls are talking and when one answers "Oui" (French for "yes") they translate it with "Let's make out".
- EX_MACHINA:
- The title is Latin for "From/out of the machine." It is also from the phrase "Deus ex Machina", literally "god from the machine".
- The alcohol bottle labels, of all things. Nathan drinks "Keikaku" beer, which fans of a certain anime series would recognize as meaning "plan" in Japanese. And he also drinks "Koros" vodka, Koros being the Greek demon of disdain and surfeit (disgust brought about by overindulgence).
- On the American version of Faceless, the last line of the film spoken by Terry Hallen is in the French language. What the line actually translates to is "Mrs. Ginny, get me out on the first flight to Paris" .
- A Fish Called Wanda contains several funerals for small yapping dogs, featuring a choir that sings "Lord have mercy, the dog is dead" in Latin. Also, the Russian that Archie uses to arouse Wanda is a poem about the glory of the worker that children in the Soviet Union learned by rote.
- In From Paris with Love, Charlie and James go to a Chinese restaurant in Paris that is stowing cocaine in the ceiling. The restaurant's name is "Le Lotus des Neiges", which means "The Snow Lotus" in French.
- Gleahan and the Knaves of Industry: "Ostberg" comes from Swedish and means "East Hill". Guess why it's "Gleahan of Eastvale.
- The Gods Must Be Crazy: N!xau, who plays Xi the main Nambian bushman, was not given anything specific to say for any of his lines because the narrator always explains what his character means. Consequently, many of his lines are wry complaints or commentaries about the film rather than lines appropriate for his character. For example, during his character's triumphant homecoming, he starts berating the people playing his fellow tribesmen for not all rushing out to greet him as they would be doing if this were real.
- Godzilla:
- Hatley High: The Chinese and Russian chess players often speak in their native languages. While there are subtitles during the scenes, they're in Russian or Chinese instead of English, apparently as a gag, requiring a knowledge of the two languages to know what's being said.
- Heathers has J.D. telling Veronica that the bullets they intend to shoot Kurt and Ram with are German "ich lüge" bullets, which are supposedly non-fatal, so that she will go along with the shooting. Ich lüge means "I am lying" in German.
- The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey: For those who understand Quenya (one of the two Elvish languages that J. R. R. Tolkien created), the lyrics of the Ethereal Choir that plays when Thranduil pays homage to Thrór is an early hint that the white gems that the Elvenking desires have a connection to his wife, and that they are made from pure starlight.
[Nin]quë silë misë nár (A white fire shines within her)
Nóna sil[më] anda[né] (The light of a star, born long ago) - In the Hindi movie Housfull 2, the lady playing Anarkali for JD says, "I love fools!" when she receives a flower from him. If you know Hindi, you'll understand flower = phool, which is commonly said as "fool". Therefore, "I love fools!" = "I love flowers!"
- How to Murder Your Wife: If you understand Italian, you'll hear Mrs. Ford recite Stanley's ultimate plot during the couple's visit to the lawyer's office. She summarizes the plot of a recent movie starring Marcello Mastroianni: "He wanted a divorce and couldn't get one, so he murdered his wife."
- In Hunger, longtime Irish republican prisoner Gerry Campbell attempts to converse with his new cellmate Davey Gillen in Irish, but it becomes quickly apparent that Gillen has no knowledge of the language. Campbell asks "Cad é mar atá tú?" (How are you?) and says "Bí réidh, anois!" (Get ready, now!) when he hears riot police approaching their cell.
- In The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1, ASL speakers got an added bonus as the ASL-speaking Avox Pollux is signing to his brother Castor. After meeting Katniss, Cressida explains to Katniss that Pollux can't speak because the Capitol cut out his tongue. He turns to his brother and signs, "She's pretty, don't you think?" and his brother signs a very enthusiastic "Yes". Considering that ASL takes facial expression into account quite a bit, the conversation could be translated as "She's really hot, isn't she?" "YEAH SHE IS." As an aside, "Avox" literally means "voiceless."
- Inglorious Basterds
- In the opening sequence, Landa's French is very good and people who speak it will understand that he's got another motive when he asks the farmer if they can speak English because it's what he's more comfortable with. It's because he knows that the farmer is hiding a Jewish family under the floorboard and wants to speak without them understanding.
- People who speak German will quickly catch onto the fact that Hicox's accent gives away that he's not really who he says he is. People from continental Europe more broadly will also realize that he uses gives the British hand signal for three (middle three fingers) instead of what's used there (thumb, pointer, middle) before he does.
- John Wick: Chapter 4 features a line near the end of the card game by Caine in Cantonese which is subtitled as "I always knew you were a cheating prick" but what he actually said translates to "Another prick from a family that should have been wiped".
- Johnny English has one scene in a sushi restaurant. Johnny toasts with "May your daughters have tiny penises." The American subtitle translation reads, "May all of your daughters be born with three bottoms."
- In Kansas City Confidential, the name of the boat in which the stolen money are hidden and the final confrontation takes place is "Mañana", meaning "tomorrow" or "morning" in Spanish depending the context in which it is used.
- In The Kentucky Fried Movie's "Fistful of Yen" segment, the leader of the evil clan is played by a Korean actor. When he's shouting orders in Korean, he's actually apologizing for his Korean fans that he's in the movie, and telling them that the director just told him to say something in Korean.
- In Kill Bill, there is a lot of Japanese dialogue which is mostly subtitled. But if you watch the movie dubbed when O-Ren says "ここから英語を話します" (I will say this in English from here) the line will remain the same and she will not say the line in English because it's dubbed which makes this scene very strange for those who understand Japanese.
- King Kong (2005): Just before reaching Skull Island, SS Venture captain Englehorn intercepts a coded message calling for the arrest of Carl Denham. Yet the audible code does not actually say anything about an arrest and instead reads: "Show me the monkey!"
- L.A. Story includes restaurants called "El Pollo Del Mar" (Chicken of the Sea, "pollo" mispronounced to rhyme with "Apollo" of course) and "L'Idiot" (The Idiot, but from the way it's pronounced it's not obvious until you see it).
- In The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen we have a witch doctor at Alan's funeral. The man is busy chanting in Zulu. His chants are (translated) him saying: "Arise, son of man. Arise child. It is not yet time to rest."
- In The Lord of the Rings Film Trilogy, quite a bit of dialogue, mainly in the songs, is said in J. R. R. Tolkien's various languages or Conlangs created by the staff and left untranslated. One particular example is when Saruman uses magic to impede the Fellowship's attempt to climb the mountain: translate him and Gandalf's chanting, and you learn that he's ordering the spirit of the mountain to wake up and unleash its wrath, while Gandalf is beseeching it to return to sleep. This is the only time in the films that the mountain's spirit (which, in the books, was directly suggested to be the cause of the unusual difficulty the Fellowship faced) is referenced.
- In The Lost World: Jurassic Park, during the T-Rex's climatic rampage through San Diego, one sees a group of Japanese business men amongst the crowd fleeing. If you know Japanese, you'll find that one of them is shouting "I left Japan to get away from this!"
- In Love in the Afternoon, a Japanese newspaper is supposedly commenting on Frank Flannagan's love life. However, the article does not actually mention him, but rather reads "The great newspaper king Kane dies". This is the same article used in the montage in Citizen Kane, with the name and picture of Frank Flannagan added in.
- Marvel Cinematic Universe:
- Iron Man: When Tony is first kidnapped by a terrorist faction, its members record a video in Urdu that seems to be a typical ransom. Anyone who speaks Urdu, though, will immediately discover the Plot Twist of Obadiah Stane being the real mastermind of the scheme, given that the terrorists both say his name and remark that it's going to cost him a lot more money for Tony's death. While Pepper eventually translates the video later in the film, Urdu speakers get a leg up on the surprise far sooner.
- Iron Man 2:
- When Tony Stark asks Natasha if she actually speaks Latin, she responds with the phrase "Fallaces sunt rerum species," a quote from Lucio Anneo Seneca meaning "The appearances of things are deceptive."
- When Vanko tells Hammer that the drones at the show won't be fully capable, he adds that they will be able to "make salute." But in Russian, salyut means fireworks. The Stark Expo turns into one hell of a fireworks show. And the Russian dub simply translated it, ignoring the joke.
- In The Mission, the locals were given free rein to say whatever they wanted in their own language. Apparently they hardly ever kept to the script and kept throwing out funny non-sequiturs or just cursing up a storm.
- Mission: Impossible – Fallout: Some non-plot-essential lines in French are not subtitled.
- Monty Python and the Holy Grail:
- "Fetchez la vache" (Go fetch the cow, in Franglais).note
- What the monks are chanting throughout is a quotation from Dies Irae (from the 13th century, another anachronism) and translates to "Merciful [or Pious] Lord Jesus, grant them rest."note
- The Muppet Movie: As Dr. Wrassman (Mel Brooks) is about to subject Kermit the Frog to electrocerembrectomy, he tells Kermit to man up and "act like a frog, not like a little toad." In German, Tod is death, and Wrassman is about to make Kermit a little dead — a little braindead, that is.
- The Olsen-banden films (and their Swedish Jönssonligan-counterparts) use this fairly often in different ways:
- Shadier companies or people tend to have mottos in Latin printed somewhere as bonus gags for those who know a little about the language; for example, a nobleman's family motto being "Honi soit qui pense" (Shame on those who think).
- Throughout the series, dialogue in unsubtitled English and German tends to appear, usually followed by jokes made about characters misunderstanding each other due to the language barrier. For instance, one character trying to speak German and aiming for "valuable/expensive instruments" ends up saying "köstliche Instrumente" (tasty instruments) due to confusing "Köstlich" with the Danish "kostbar".note
- The fourth Jönssonligan movie, however, zigzags the trope with the dialogue in Russian. Conversations between a Russian submarine captain and his crew get subtitled, but other scenes with Russian and Swedish characters trying to communicate do not. Like the above, the unsubtitled parts may be justified by the Swedish characters not knowing any of the language themselves, leading their attempts to communicate to fail even more badly than in English or German.For example...
- In Pacific Rim, all the Japanese lines are given subtitles... except one. Mako saying "I love you" to Stacker right before he dies.
- The Parent Trap (1998): After Nick tells Annie-as-Hallie that he's going to marry Meredith, Annie takes news of her father remarrying so harshly, she rants in French, confusing the heck out of Nick.
Annie: (in French) I hope you're joking. Meredith, she's not the girl for you. It's not possible, I'm dreaming. What—
- Predators: Nikolai's last line just before he blows up himself and the Tracker is in unsubtitled Russian. If you know Russian, you'll know he's saying "some face you got there!", continuing the Once per Episode running gag of protagonists calling the Predators ugly.
- In The Princess Bride, after Inigo loses his fight with the Man in Black, he returns to where he was told by Vizzini to wait, and gets stinking drunk. A member of the palace guard sees him and yells, "Ho there!" Inigo replies, "I do not budge. Keep your 'joder'!" The word "joder" (which sounds like "Ho there" in English) means "fuck" in Spanish; he's basically telling the guard to fuck off.
- In Rampage, the head primatologist, played by Dwayne Johnson, is unsurprisingly fluent in American Sign Language. His name sign is Rock.
- The Syfy adaptation of Riverworld has an airship inexplicably called "Herumfurzen", which means "farting around" in German.
- Run Sweetheart Run: When Cherie goes to a church for assistance, a beggar at the entrance is holding up a cardboard sign in Spanish that reads, "La menstruación es la única sangre que no nace de la violencia y es la que más asco te da" translation
- Rush Hour 2: The viewer's interpretation of the nightclub scene depends on whether or not they speak Mandarin. Lee tells Carter that his instructions to the Triads were to "pick up their samurai swords and shave your butt". In fact, Lee was lying; Carter started out speaking gibberish before telling the Triads in passable Mandarin to "go home and go to sleep".
- In The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming, there are obviously many joking lines spoken by the Russian soldiers. One example of this is, when the Russians are in an American garage, one thinks a bag is filled with grain and offers it to another. The other tastes it and proceeds to exclaim "This is SHIT!"
- In Serenity (2005), the codephrase Simon uses to "turn off" his rampaging sister River, Eto kuram na smeh, is Russian for "That is laughter for chickens" or, more literally, "this is for the chickens to laugh at", an idiom meaning "That's ridiculous."
- Scarface (1983):
- Hector referred to Tony as "Car'e Cicatriz" which is Spanish for "Scar Face."
- Tony says in the bathtub "por nada" (for nothing), showing how he is starting to realize how meaningless it is to live in luxury.
- Tony hostilely calls Frank "amigo" (friend) when talking to him at the club.
- At the beach, Tony calls a bikini-clad woman "sabrosura" (tasty).
- Shaun of the Dead manages to play this for both laughs and drama. At two points in the film, the titular main character makes a walk to his local convenience store to buy some snacks; one point before the Zombie Apocalypse, and one point afterwards (somehow without him noticing). The second time, the cheerful music on the radio that usually greets him is suddenly cut off and replaced by a rather frantic-voiced man urgently broadcasting a news update that Shaun might want to pay attention to... except the radio station is Indian and, unfortunately for Shaun, the news update is in Hindi.
- Star Wars: Vader is spelled the same as the Dutch word for "father". (The actual pronunciation is completely different, and in any case, it was not intentional, as Vader and Anakin Skywalker were separate characters in the first drafts. Vader's name was originally taken from "invader".) They also use a number of real-life languages for various aliens; Lando's co-pilot, Nien Nunb, speaks accurate Kikuyu, a Kenyan language.
- The Thing (1982): The Norwegian screaming at the Americans in the beginning of the film is explaining that the dog is a shapeshifting alien, which the Americans don't figure out until halfway through the film. Faced by what appears to be a madman shooting at them, the base commander guns him down.
- ¡Three Amigos! has a scene where Dusty, Lucky and Ned freeze to hide from two Mexican guards, one of whom is describing to the other a recipe in Spanish.
- The farce Top Secret! is set mostly in East Germany, and has a lot of fun with characters speaking "German". Mostly they're actually speaking in either gibberish or irrelevant Yiddish curses, although there is some German as well, including this classic exchange between villain and henchman:
Streck: Make sure they leave no marks.
von Horst: (severely) Ich liebe dich, mein Schatz.[[note]]"I love you, my dear [literally, treasure]." - Tremors 2: Aftershocks: Pedro only speaks un-subtitled Spanish, and the other characters don't translate what he says.
- The Usual Suspects: Keyser Söze's surname means "verbal" in Turkish, a hint that Söze is the true identity of Roger "Verbal" Kint.
- "Elster", the name of the man who hires the protagonist of Vertigo, is the German word for magpie. Besides the Thieving Magpie stereotype, it's a bird that also symbolizes trickery and deception.
- A Wedding (1978): Luigi, the father of the groom, and his brother occasionally speak in un-subtitled Italian while discussing whether the latter should be there.
- Towards the end of Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, Willy Wonka reads off a legal contract to Charlie and Grampa Joe, attempting to explain why they supposedly didn't get the prize. Part of the contract is in Latin (presumably an Affectionate Parody of all the Latin in real legal jargon), and it reads: "Fax mentis incendium gloria cultum... memo bis punitor delicatum." This translates roughly as: "To cultivate the burning torch of the mind... mentioned twice for the punisher's pleasure."
- In The Windmill Massacre, all of Takashi's dialogue is in untranslated Japanese. Much of it was improvised by the actor who then provided the director a translation of what he had said.
- Wonder Woman (2017): When Steve introduces Diana to his Native American friend Chief, Chief greets her in untranslated Blackfoot. If you know Blackfoot, you'll discover that Chief introduces himself by his real name; Napi, the trickster hero of Blackfoot mythology and a fellow demi-god. Just in case you were wondering what was up with his Magical Native American schtick.
- X-Men Film Series:
- X-Men: First Class: The Soviet Captain refers to an officer on the bridge as "tovarishch zampolit", which is (incompletely) subtitled simply as "comrade." While the word "tovarishch" does mean "comrade," the enthusiasm with which the crew later drag him off to the brig becomes understandable if one knows that zampolit is how Soviet political officers were addressed.
- The Wolverine: Yashida's sword, the one he tries to pass on to Logan, is inscribed with kanji characters that mean "never grow old, never die."
- X-Men: Apocalypse: In the Angel vs. Nightcrawler scene, a girl is holding up a sign announcing "Kampf 11". 11 in German is "elf", one of Nightcrawler's nicknames in the comics (as he's blue and has pointy ears).
- According to Urban Legend, the Zulu warrior in Zulu who falls dying before his chief, and who makes a heartfelt declaration of loyalty as he does so, is actually saying something along the lines of "I have an enormous penis" in Swahili.note
Gamebooks
- Some of the Lone Wolf books include messages written in the Giak language, which can give interesting hints if you can read them (with the help of the Magnamund Companion).
Literature
- A minor character in 1634: The Bavarian Crisis is called Michel l'Esclavon, duc d'Espehar, marquis de Choses-sans-Valeur, vicomte de Lavion, seigneur de l'Haleur, chevalier Sanscourage de Contre-Ours, which, in English, comes to Michael the Slavic, Duke of Hope, Marquis of Things-without-Value, Viscount of the Airplane, Lord of Haulers, knight Without Courage of Opposing Bears.
- One of the short stories features two Swedish nobles named Harvärja and Stolpeskott. Both are at first glance concievable as "new" nobility names. "Harvärja", a combination of the words for "hare" and "rapier", is also a part of the idiom "take to the hare's rapier", meaning to run away. "Stolpeskott" combines the words for the heraldic figure "pale", and "shot", but stolpe can also mean "post", as in "goalpost", and "stolpskott" (literally a shot that hits the goal post) has also entered the vernacular as a term for disappointing failure.
- In Accelerando, Aineko's name is derived from 愛猫 ("aibyō") which means "pet cat". The second character, 猫, the character for cat is also pronounced "neko". If you say "aineko" it's also like saying "A.I. neko" since it is also an Artificial Intelligence.
- Adventuremice: The name of one of the characters, Fledermaus means "Bat" (literally ‘flying mouse') in German.
- A number of 19th-century Russian novels, such as Anna Karenina, include random bursts of French from certain characters. Learning French was considered part of a "respectable" education for the Russian nobility at the time, so it was a marker of status for people to be able to converse freely in French. In particular, it's used when well-off characters discuss things they don't want the servants to know.
- Area 51: A villain is introduced named Abdu Al Iblis. This means "Servant of the Devil" in Arabic. Oddly enough, Richard Francis Burton (despite having lived in Mecca where he met him) doesn't realize what this means (nor does it tip off Arabs generally).
- Autobiography of Red has a sneaky one in the form of a volcano called Icchantikas. The name sounds like Mayincatec gibberish, but actually comes from a Sanskrit term used in Mahayana Buddhism to refer to someone who is incapable of achieving enlightenment.
- The Nordic Noir Bäckström series have multiple examples:
- A retired copper is called in for questioning. He is a suspect because whilst active in the police, he had a personal zero tolerance policy towards criminals and tended to be very direct and physically robust in dealing with them. This got him disciplined on many occasions. His name is Stålhammar.
- Dealing with a sensitive case of art fraud that implicates Swedish royalty, Bäckström interviews a minor member of the nobility, who realises he's out of his depth and cheerfully bamboozles him. Her chilldhood nickname that stuck is Pyttan; while in Swedish this is derived from pytta meaning "Tiny" or "Titch", its pronunciation is almost the French putain, meaning "whore" or "slut". As Pyttan is no stranger to the demi-monde and is about to restore her family fortunes by marrying the Mafia boss she has been mistress to for some years, knowing he is an unscrupulous criminal and aware of some of the things he's done to rise to the top in crime, this is a well-chosen linguistic joke.
- In A Brother's Price the princesses' late husband is called "Keifer". "Keifen" is German, meaning "to nag". The late husband in question was indeed known for whining, complaining, and otherwise manipulating his wives into doing what he wanted to do.
- The Boundless: When the girl Will meets in Farewell invites him to her circus, she tells him to tell the guy at the tent flap "Jeg inviterte", which is Norwegian for "I'm invited". note
- The Cat Who... Series:
- Qwill and Polly always end their phone conversations with "à bientôt".
- "Clockpunk and the Vitalizer" has The Vitalizer put on a heron documentary for him and his captive Dolores Veta "Clockpunk" Garza to watch. "Heron" happens to be what her last name Garza means.
- Fellow superhero Purple Quetzal also asks her if she's awake in Spanish earlier in the story.
- Crónicas de un gato a medianoche: "Irises infectas"Translation is grammatically wrong in Spanish, as there's no plural form for the word 'iris' (the colored part of the eyes). However, Lila Gaela named it that way to make a bilingual reference to the flowers known as irises because they are part of the one-shot's imagery.
- Just a minor one, but Darkness Visible has an exchange in French during a scene in St Petersburg which is never translated. Also a sort of Genius Bonus – Not everyone knows that the language of high society in Russia at that time was French, not Russian.
- Deep Rivers: The narration sparkles several sayings and sentences in Quechua because Arguedas learned both languages during his childhood. In particular, the huaynos and many dialogues uttered by characters of Indigenous descent are written in Quechua. For example, the Indigenous protestors yell "¡Mánan! ¡Kunankamallam suark’aku...!"translation.
- Discworld:
- Terry Pratchett occasionally includes a few of these, though several of them are explained or translated later. Some of them are not, however – for example, in Soul Music, the main character Imp y Celyn talks about and later plays a song he wrote himself, titled "Sioni Bod Da." Since Soul Music is almost in its entirety a completely awesome Discworldization of the entire rock music movement in general, it should come as no surprise that there's a couple of hidden reference there. One is indirectly explained: "Imp" means Bud and "Celyn" means Holly, hence "Bud y Holly". On the other hand, "Sioni Bod Da" is mostly unexplained: It's Welsh for "Johnny Be Good" (read: "Johnny B. Goode").
- In the French version, Patrick Couton translated the pun in Breton: Imp y Celyn became Kreskenn Kelen and his song was called "Yannick Bez Mad".
- A scene from Lords and Ladies Nanny Ogg's observation at dinner with Casanunda is an example of this trope. "She peered at the label. 'Chateau Maison? Chat-eau... that's foreign for cat's water, you know, but that's only their way, I know it ain't real cat's water." Chateau is French for "castle" (or something similar), chat is French for "cat" and eau is French for "water."
- Making Money: "Jikan no Muda", the Discworld equivalent of Sudoku, is Japanese for "Waste of Time".
- Recurring example: The Sto Plains. "Sto" is "hundred" in Polish. Thus there is the town of Sto Lat, which translates to "a hundred years". Sto Lat is also the name of the Polish equivalent of "Happy Birthday to You." ("May (s)he live a hundred years"). In Russian, Sto Lat means "a hundred plate mails".
- Liber Paginarum Fulvarum, the proper name of the Necrotelicomnicon: Latatian for The Book of Yellow Pages.
- The motto of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch is "Fabricati Diem, Pvnc" — which the narrator translates as "to protect and serve", but which would more accurately translate to "make my day, punk".
- Interesting fact: "Fabricati Diem, Pvnc" is actually all that remains to the battered Watch sign, which at one point read in full "Fabricati Diem, Pvncti Agvnt Celeriter", which means in Latatian "Make the day, the moments pass quickly."
- There's another, more subtle, level to this one. With a somewhat nerdier level of knowledge it is also possible to read "Fabricati Diem Pvnc" as "Built in the year dot", which given the preceding description of the ancient building is highly appropriate.
- In Feet of Clay, several of the golems have Yiddish names, befitting the Jewish origin of the golem legend. One golem's name was "Meshugah", meaning "Crazy" or "Insane". It certainly lives up to its moniker, being driven insane by all the rules imposed on it by its creators.
- Pratchett slipped a subversion of this trope into a Monstrous Regiment footnote, involving the language of birds. It points out that the beauty of birdsong can lose its luster for ornithologists, who know for a fact that they're overhearing birds dissing and/or making passes at one another.
- In Mort at one point Albert says "Sodomy non sapiens". Mort asks what does that mean, Albert answers "Buggered if I know". While this is (effectively) the correct translation of the first phrase, many readers wrongly assumed Albert doesn't know what "Sodomy non sapiens" means.
- In Maskerade, the Pedlar's Song from the opera Lohenshaak begins "Schneide meinen eigenen Hals..." which is German for "Cut my own throat".
- In the same book, the Brindisian opera singer Enrico Basilica, who is secretly the Morporkian Henry Slugg, is singing "Show Me the Way to Go Home" in the bath, when the maid comes in and he instantly switches to Brindisian opera ... which is actually "Show Me the Way to Go Home" in Italian.
- And in the same book again, the opera Il Truccatore (the Discworld counterpart to Il trovatore) — according to Salzella it means "the Master of Disguise" or "the Man of a Thousand Faces", but it's more literally "the make-up artist". It also doubles as a Shout-Out to Lon Chaney in a plot that riffs on his most famous role.
- The mottos on the guild coat of arms tend to be in Dog Latin, and the only one of them that isn't — "Art brought forth the candle" in Men at Arms — is not only a somewhat sad pun on the name of the candle-maker (Arthur Carry), but also a bilingual bonus as well as an important plot point. The Latatian translation would be "Ars enixa est candelam". Vimes had been shown the coat of arms and the motto right at the beginning of the story and then was busy for more than half of the book trying to figure out how the Patrician was being poisoned. You fill in the blanks.
- Expect lots of this in German whenever Uberwald and/or philosophy are being mentioned. Überwald is German (the inhabitants of Discworld prefer to avoid the diacritics because they'll just roll off and cause unnecessary punctuation) and literally translates into "over forest" or "beyond forest". Or in Latin: Transylvania.
- The Dutch translator of Equal Rites had an easy time of it with Granny Weatherwax: she became Ouma Wedersmeer. He was stumped in trying to translate her broomstick being the equivalent of an elderly Morris Minor: the reference is to a clunky ugly British car that while mechanically sound didn't want to go very fast. This concept would not directly translate into Dutch. Then he realized a kind of old, ugly, slow but reliable bike in Holland is nicknamed the "Granny Wagon". Bingo...
- Witches Abroad drops hints to all sorts of plot developments if you're paying close attention, but one in particular requires some knowledge of French: Lilith is currently using the alias "de Tempscire"; "temps cire" can be translated to "weather wax."
- There's a lot of Canis Latinicus in the schedule of The Fools' Guild Diary in keeping with their pseudo-monastic structure, but most of it gets directly translated. One that doesn't is "Liber Caerulus", which is "Jokes for Adults" but literally means "Blue Book".note
- The protagonist's name in Dork Diaries is Nikki, which is also the Japanese word for "diary".
- Dungeon Crawler Carl: The first Neighborhood Boss is a human being who has been collected by Borant Corporation, recycled, and altered into a monstrous form. She speaks only in Spanish, which Carl doesn't understand, and the narrative doesn't translate it. However, if the reader understands it, they can see that she's confused, scared, and begging Jesus to forgive her.
- José María Eguren: The title of his poem "Reyes rojos" (translation: "Red Kings") spells the word 'eyes' in both English and Spanish. Let us tweak it a little so it's easier to notice "(R)eyes (r)ojos"note .
- Finn and Ezra's Bar Mitzvah Time Loop:
- The scenes in the Orthodox world are peppered with Hebrew terms that the reader may have to look up.
- When Finn considers a fake name to introduce himself to Ezra's family, he picks "Pinchas", which is sometimes Anglicized as Phineas, which is often shortened to Finn.
- The old rabbi at Ezra's shul is named Rabbi Alter, while the new one is Rabbi Neumann ("old" and "new man" in Yiddish).
- Glasses Girls: "Middle School Meganekko," the title of the first chapter, contains the Japanese word Meganekko, which literally means "glasses girl." This is fitting for a story that's all about girls wearing glasses (albeit ones that aren't theirs).
- Green-Sky Trilogy: A big clue as to the series Backstory comes from parsing out the "alien" terminology as being Latin, German, French, or Hebrew words suffering from some linguistic drift. For example, the psychic skill that affects plant growth translates to "Green-speak" by way of slightly corrupted German.
- Gulliver's Travels: The flying city of Laputa is a harsh allegory of England and its colonial dominion over Ireland; the name means "the whore" in Spanish.
- House of Leaves: The in-universe editor of the novel that the book is about (yeah, it's that kind of book) provides translations for most of them and complains about it, especially since most have nothing to do with what's being talked about.
- House of Robots: Robot Revolution has some of the characters (Sammy's father, and his Spanish teacher) speak in Spanish sentences to him. Examples include...
- Ay, Caramba! Usted Esta En Grandes, Grandes Problemas, Samuel!note
- El tiempo no espara a nadie!note
- The Hunger Games:
- "Panem", the name of the country this story is set in, means "bread" in Latin. This revealed to be a reference to "panem et circenses" — when a government appeases people with food and spectacle to maintain power, which is exactly what the Capitol does.
- The mute servants in the Capitol are called the Avox, which means "without voice" in Greek and Latin.note
- "Katniss" is the name of a family of plants, also known as "Sagittaria" — Latin for "archer".
- Tom Sharpe wrote two Take That! novels after being deported from South Africa in The Apartheid Era. Indecent Exposure and Riotous Assembly both feature a demented and racist secret policeman dedicated to the dream of a White South Africa. He is liutnant Verkramp. In Afrikaans, verkramp is a word meaning, variably, constipated, crazy, toxic, bigoted...
- In Sinclair Lewis' It Can't Happen Here, Doremus asks Lorinda about translating German. She replies that the only German she knows is a phrase Buck taught her: "God bless you" (Verfluchter Schweinehund). Verfluchter Schweinehund actually means "damned pig-dog".
- Letters Back to Ancient China has many. One example: The German unions are mentioned, which are all named "IG ...". This abbreviation can be pronounced like Mandarin for "give once", but Kao-tai writes that they rather should be named "take ten thousand times".
- Lolita: The English edition contains numerous sentences, remarks, and pet names in French — it approaches superfluous. The narrator, being a multilingual scholar, is the primary reason for this — at one point, an entire paragraph of dramatic emotional professions is written in French.
- J. R. R. Tolkien probably deserves his own page. But one example: The title of "longest buildup to a pun that isn't even translated in the story itself" belongs to Akallabêth ("The Downfallen" in Adûnaic), the story of the sinking of the island Númenor. Translating Akallabêth into High Elvish yields Atalantë, which is suspiciously close to the name of a famous mythological island which also sank. Atlantis in Greek comes from a root meaning 'uplifted', which adds another layer.
- Many place and character names in The Lord of the Rings are quite descriptive, sometimes to the point of Foreshadowing. Maybe Frodo would have been more cautious entering Cirith Ungol if he knew that it meant "Pass of the Spider"?
- The Lotterys More or Less: Luiz, the Brazilian house guest who stays with the Lotterys for the majority of the book, says a few words in Portuguese.
- A recurrent trope in MARZENA Transhuman Ambrosia, with everything being spelled funetikally of course, and not to mention the consistant uses of either German, Dutch or French/Russian Quotation marks. Note that whenever German quotation marks are used that every noun becomes capitalized as it is done according to proper German grammar.
- Marian and Geni (Marian's Digital Copy) will seldom utter random Russian slurs like "Pochemu ti mala sewka! Ya budu bit tebya na smyerts!" (Why you little Bitch! I will beat you to death!) or "Bllin da ladna ooja?!" (Darn back already?!).
- And there's Livia tendency to insert random Dutch words in her sentence like Tsehr Maar/Vett ü vel (Ya know).
- The zombies while Kristen and Lauren are inside Dr. Samir's head will chant seemingly random gibberish which are actually Russian, "Shtobo mola jit" (for little life), "Myorvt shtobo jit" (Dying to Live), and "Mogsgi, Mogsgi, Mogsgi" (Brains, Brains, Brains).
- While in the Saarland, Gorski and the TAR Kernel converse a bit in German. Gorski tells the Kernel that "Fer-tseihung Kernel aber man moos bay-eilen, vo shtecks Yoan?" (Proper German; " Verzeihen Sie, Herr Oberst (German Equivalent of Colonel, read 'Kernel'), doch Ich habe es eilig; Wo ist Yoan?") (English Translation; "Forgiveness Kernel, but one must hurry, where is Yoan?") and the Kernel tells him that he's in the basement, "Bringen zie hin zu him." (Proper German; "Bring Sie zu Ihm hin.") (English Translation; "Take her to him.")
- Also Private Thomas, "Ich bin kein Artz, Ich bin Zoldat." (I am no Doctor, I am Soldier).
- In Nine Goblins, one of the goblins is named Algol, which is an Arabic word for a kind of monster that can be translated as "ghoul", or possibly "goblin".
- "Place of Meeting": Although vampires from all over the world are gathered, within the text only one of them speaks a full sentence in a language other than English. He speaks German, saying: "Ja, Ja!... S'war schwer den Friedhof zu finden!". In English, this is "Yes, yes!... It was tough to find the cemetery." The line occurs early in the text and is the first cue that the cast doesn't consist of humans.
- Princesses of the Pizza Parlor: In Cookies and Campers: When the game setting is being explained, a hypothetical Felitzfeleenan is named through cat puns. The non-English part that's not just A Dog Named "Perro", is that Ronron is French Onomatopoeia for a (cat's) purr:
"Felitzfeleena", [Helen] said. "City of—"
"Kitty cats!" squeaked Claire. "I think he got that name from Spanish. Oh! I bet they all speak like Spanish kitties and say stuff like 'Hola, my name is Señor Eneko Gatista de Meowtonya y... y Ronroneos! You killed my father, prepare to die!'" - In The Realm of Albion, several characters who derive from medieval romances and originally had anachronistic non-Celtic names have been renamed... mostly with direct Welsh equivalents of the actual meaning of their original names.
- In REAMDE by Neal Stephenson Richard's castle in Canada is always referred to by its German name of "Schloss Hundschüttler" (or just Schloss for short) which translates as "Castle Dogshaker".
- Jason Matthews's novel Red Sparrow is generally quite accommodating to non-Russian speakers, by translating a lot of Russian words and phrases into English immediately after mentioning the word, or making them decipherable in context. He leaves a couple of lewd remarks by Dominika untranslated, however: Tranhi menya ("fuck me") and Yob tvoyu mat ("motherfuckers").
- In The Rest of Us Just Live Here, Jared calls Meredith "Merde Breath" rather often. Speakers of French will know that "merde" means shit.
- In-universe example: In the Rivers of London series, Peter finds some writing on a magical booby-trap left behind by the Faceless Man. After it's defused, he recognizes the writing as Tolkien's Quenya, and puts a copy of it on the internet, where LotR fans quickly translate it as:
"If you can read this, you are not only a nerd but probably dead."
- A Series of Unfortunate Events has some of Sunny's comments, such as her "arigato" in the Slippery Slope, or her saying "Aubergine" to mean that she is making a plot with this eggplant. Others are a mishmash of English ("Kicbucit?" for "Is he dead?") and a couple are plain old Hebrew ("Yomhuledet!" which is translated as "Surprise" but means "birthday" and "Yomhashoah" which is translated as "Never again" but means "Holocaust Memorial Day"). The children also make pasta Puttanesca, an Italian dish translating as "whore's sauce."
- In Simon vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda, Simon's email persona is named Jacques. It's derived from the French saying "Jacques a dit", which is the French equivalent to the game "Simon Says". It's also how Blue figures out who Simon is offline.
- Smaller & Smaller Circles: Several of Joanna's phrases (in French, when speaking with Fr. Saenz) and thought processes (in Italian) are left untranslated. The 2015 edition re-releases them in English.
- In Harry Harrison's novel Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers the phrase "Ich möchte ein Einzelzimmer mit Bad im ersten Stock!" is translated in a footnote as "I spotted a door behind the throne, so grab onto me and we can escape that way." The real meaning is "I want a single room with a bath on the first floor".
- In Der Stechlin educated characters occasionally use French (also Italian and English) phrases, while the members of the rural lower classes (agricultural labourers, workers at the glass factory in Neuglobsow, many of Dubslav's servants, etc.) speak in the Brandenburg dialect of Low German.
- Vainqueur the Dragon has a much put-upon minion named Victor, who is of course (as a human) far inferior to the glory of a dragon. Vainqueur will never admit that he has grown to genuinely like Victor. He also doesn't appear to have noticed that "Vainqueur" is French for "victor"; if he had noticed that they share a name, he would certainly have compelled Victor to change it.
- Philip K. Dick's VALIS provides us with blatant Author Avatar Horselover Fat, which a student of languages will tell you is "Philip Dick", in that "Philip" comes from Greek Phillipos, "Lover of horses" note , and "Dick" is German for "fat", as in "thick". Subverted, in that Dick admits this in all of this in about three pages... and in relatively short order introduces Philip K. Dick as a character.
- The Wandering Inn: Many members of the United Nations Company occasionally speak in their respective native languages.
- The Witch of Knightcharm: Used in-universe. The story follows students at an evil Wizarding School which has students from all around the globe and whose leaders solve the inevitable translation problems by casting a spell on all the students to force them to speak, write, and understand Latin. However, the translation spell is disabled when students go on certain off-campus missions which require them to interact with normal people (who presumably don't understand Latin). When this happens, students who speak the same language can communicate in a way that others who don't speak that language can't understand. Emily learns this when she hears the powerful rookies Rosa and Alejandra speaking Spanish as they return from a mission; they can talk to each other, but Emily (and everyone else who isn't fluent in Spanish) cannot understand them.
- In A Wolf in the Soul, several characters' names have hidden meanings when their names are translated.
Music
- Acid Bath has two songs with titles written in Cajun French (a dialect spoken in very specific parts of their home state of Louisiana) — "Diäb Soulé" and "Toubabo Koomi", which respectively mean "Drunken Devil" and "Land of White Cannibals".
- "The Macaronic Carol" by Shari Ajemian and Sarah Newcomb alternates between lines in English and Latin. The English lines are all about how much fun it is to carol gaily in fields of snow; the Latin lines are things like "my feet hurt", "it's cold", and "I want to go home".
- Since Charles Aznavour can sing in eight separate languagesnote being multilingual is sometimes necessary to enjoy his work, particularly when he gets creative and composes a song made up of more than one language. One particularly delightful example is the song "For me Formidable" which alternates between French and English and uses a lot of clever wordplay between the two.
You are the one for me, for me, formidable
But how can you see me, see me, si minable? - The Beach Boys "Vege-Tables" includes a bilingual pun: The line "Cart off and sell my vegetables" is a pun on "kartoffel", which is German for "potato".
- The Beatles' "Michelle" has the line "These are words that go together well" resung two lines later in French: "Sont des mots qui vont très bien ensemble."
- Beck:
- Song "Hotwax" from Odelay has the following chorus: Yo soy disco quebrado / Yo tengo chicle en el cerebro. It translates to "I am a broken record / I have bubblegum in my brain."
- The song "Loser", which contains the repeated line Soy un perdedor ("I am a loser").
- La Belle's Lady Marmalade includes the question "Voulez-vous coucher avec moi, ce soir?note " in the chorus. note
- The Clash song Spanish Bombs which contains the refrain Spanish bombs, yo te quiero infinito, oh, te quiero, oh mí corazón (Spanish bombs, I love you infinitely, oh, I love you, oh my heart).
- Cracker's "What You're Missing" has a couple of untranslated Spanish phrases in the background vocals. First there's "con pelirroja", which would roughly be "with (a) redhead" — the phrase comes up just before red-haired bassist and backing vocalist Brandy Wood gets to Step Up to the Microphone for a verse. Later in the same song there's "protegido por monos", meaning "guarded by monkeys"; the phrase "guarded by monkeys" is sort of a Running Gag cropping up multiple times on the album Forever.
- The title of “Davaj Davaj” by DJ Aligator translates to "give it to me".
- The first album by the Italian rock band Elio e le Storie Tese is titled "Elio samaga hukapan kariyana turu", which means "Let's all merrily fart and cum with Elio" in Tamil. The title of their later album "Italyan, rum casusu čikti" was taken from the headlines of a newspaper from Cyprus and means "It turned out that the 'Italian' was a Greek spy".
- The Evillious Chronicles's Sloth song, "Gift From The Princess That Brought Sleep," appears to have a Gratuitous English word, "gift," repeated over and over. It turns out that it's actually Gratuitous German, as "gift" in German means "poison."
- While Brazilian singer Falcão did an intentionally broken English translation of a cheesy and popular song about a black VW Beetle, he named it "Black People Car" — because difficulties in translating the local name of the car (Fusca) made him seek what Volkswagen meant in German, and it was "people's car".
- FLAVOR FOLEY:
- Thrice in Static, about a Former Child Star desperately clinging to her old TV show and desperate for anyone to just ease her loneliness in a an adult world she's frightened and tired by that's forgotten her:
- Miku's dance is flag semaphore code, spelling out 'DON'T GO'
- The Japanese subtitles switch from hiragana to kanji — a feature in Japanese kids' shows to teach them how to read the characters.
- The "real life" portion shows sunflowers and cherry blossoms. Sunflowers represent longevity and loyalty, while cherry blossoms represent the shortness of human lives. In the context of the song, it represents the singer's desperation to ease her loneliness and return to a happy past (best represented in her insisting on staying in her old-timey kids' show), while the cherry blossoms represent everyone else growing up and moving on.
- Miku's dance is flag semaphore code
- "Water the Roses", about a dying relationship:
- It also has flower language: much of them are about Unrequited Love, faithfulness, misfortune, and bitterness, in keeping with the theme of a disintegrating relationship. Of note is that two roses mean a mutual relationship, but in the music video, there is only one rose, symbolising how one-sided the love is.
- Doubles as Visual Pun: the video shows ivies, lillies, and yew, which share the same first letters as "I love you". These flowers are also poisonous, representing the dying relationship.
- It also has flower language
- Thrice in Static, about a Former Child Star desperately clinging to her old TV show and desperate for anyone to just ease her loneliness in a an adult world she's frightened and tired by that's forgotten her:
- A lot of Heilung's lyrics are from historical texts, mainly in Old Norse. It isn't hard to find translations, but if you want to get the most out of the music, it probably helps if you can understand the language, instead of just reading along or hearing it and thinking "that sounds cool."
- There's some unexpected and untranslated French toward the end of Judas Priest's 1977 song "Saints in Hell": "Abbatoir! Abbatoir! Mon Dieu, quelle horreur!" ("Slaughterhouse! Slaughterhouse! My God, what horror!")
- Knorkator, another German metal band, has one song entirely in Thai. However, the lyrics are entirely about Alf Ator's then girlfriend and now wife telling how she was asked to write a song in her native Thai and she has no idea what that song should be about. But it doesn't really matter since nobody in the band or the audience will understand it anyway.
- Possibly unintentional (though knowing the artist...), but MARETU's "マエガミスト (Maegamist)" has a cross-language pun in the title. "前髪 (まえがみ maegami)" is the Japanese word for bangs (the hair type), which come up as a central symbol in the song. Thus, when literally translated using that, the song's title is pretty much "Banger", slang for a really catchy song in English.
- MILGRAM: Mahiru's second MV, 'I Love You', repeats the titular Japanese phrase 'daisuki' over and over in its chorus, repeating the 'dai' part in a way that would literally translate like 'I really, really, really love you!' However, that 'dai' part also sounds identical to the english word 'die', and given how the relationship in question ends, that is very intentional.
- Mogwai's "Dial: Revenge", with Welsh lyrics written and sung by guest vocalist Gruff Rhys, is based around a pun you have to be familiar with both English and Welsh to understand. Certain types of payphones show the word "dial" on the LCD screen when you pick up the receiver, and "dial" (pronounced "dee-all") happens to mean "revenge" in Welsh — hence one of the lyrics translating to "every time I pick up the phone, it says 'revenge'".
- "Familiar" by Liam Payne and J Balvin uses both Payne's native English and Balvin's native Spanish, and while the title dropping line "Can we get familiar" is obviously being used in the biblical sense anyway, the next line's rhyme suggests that that r isn't actually there and it's actually more directly asking to have the singer's baby—"família" being Spanish for "family".
- The Pogues: "Fiesta", about partying in Spain, has lyrics in English with inserted Spanish phrases. The last verse is entirely in (rough) Spanish (with one Italian line). It contains enigmatic mentions of one "Cait O'Riordan" and an "Costello el rey del America". O'Riordan was The Pogues' first bassist, until she ran off to marry Elvis ("The king of America") Costello.
- The Poxy Boggards' "I Wear No Pants" contains a Trilingual bonus. It switches from English to Italian to German, before going back to English. The non-English verses (besides the obvious translation of "I wear no pants" in each verse) translate roughly to:
Italian:Look at my balls!
Look at my balls!
Look at my balls!
(It's) not old macaroni!German:(It's) striking to look at!
Striking to look at!
Striking to look at!
My big prick! - Red Hot Chili Peppers have "Cabron" from By the Way, which contributes to quite a bit of Lyrical Dissonance since it's a quite upbeat, peppy track with the title meaning "motherfucker".
- The title of the titular film in El Mismo by Sid Maudlin just sounds like garden-variety Gratuitous Spanish in a movie title, but "el mismo" means "the same"—and the song is about unoriginal movies.
- At the end of the Steely Dan song "Only a Fool Would Say That," the Spanish phrase "Jiji, solamente un tonto lo mencionara" is spoken. It's the title of the song translated into that language.
- The song "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" by Crosby, Stills, and Nash has a short verse in Spanish at the end. Original and English translation follow:
Spanish
Que linda me la trae a Cuba
La reina de la Mar Caribe
Cielo sol no tiene sangre allí
Y que triste que no puedo vaya.
O, va! O, va!English
How lovely! It brings me back to Cuba
The queen of the Caribbean Sea
The sun in the sky has no blood there
And how sad that I cannot go.
Oh, go! Oh, go! - The title of Welsh band Super Furry Animals' EP Moog Droog: English-speaking listeners may get the combined Shout-Out to Moog synthesizers and A Clockwork Orange (where "droog" is Nadsat for "friend") note ... But "moog droog" also sort of sounds like "mwg drwg", which is Welsh slang for marijuana (literally "naughty smoke", but the English equivalent would be "wacky tobacky").
- A Russian phrase (Я сошла с ума — "I have lost my mind") is in the chorus of "All The Things She Said" by t.A.T.u.
- Their song "Gomenasai" (Japanese for "I'm Sorry") has the word, well, Gomenasai in it (it's misspelled on purpose). An English song with a Japanese title by a Russian band.
- When the song "Зачем я" ("Why do I...") was adapted for the band's first international album and given the new name "Stars", it still kept its verses in Russian.
- The song "Die Eier Von Satan" by tool features German lyrics delivered in an angry tirade over a cheering audience and grinding industrial music. The translated lyrics are actually a simple recipe for hash brownies. The lyrics also feature a German pun. The name of the brownies are "The eggs of Satan," with "eggs" being German slang for "testicles." The recipe, as the speaker repeatedly proclaims to massive cheers, includes no actual eggs.
- Voltaire was raised by a bilingual mother, so he slips in this trope. In "Day of the Dead" there is a English version with a verse in Spanish, and a Spanish version with an English verse.
- Cheech Marin's rapid stream of Spanish in the middle of "Taco Grande" by "Weird Al" Yankovic translates approximately to: "Good evening, sir. Welcome to Enrico's Casa de Salsa. We have many delicious entrees. If I might recommend the Burning Hell Chicken, very delicious. Your eyes will burn up, your stomach will be on fire, you'll be in the bathroom for a week, do you understand what I'm saying, stupid silly gringo?!"
- Additionally, "Perform This Way" has the line « Excusez-moi, qui a pété? », which is French for "Excuse me, who farted?".
- Milena Warthon has both Spanish and Quechua as her native languages, so this means that a few of her songs include some words in Quechua, often as a reference to Andean mythology and folklore. For instance, in "Más allá", she says hanan pacha instead of cielo (sky/heaven). And, in her hit single "Warmisitay", she title drops it quite a few times, as warmi means woman in Quechua, with warmisitay being an affectionate way of saying it.
- If you aren't at least trilingual, you're not going to fully understand most of Bloodywood's songs: they customarily have screamer Jayant Bhadula performing in Hindi or Punjabi and Raoul Kerr rapping in English. Fortunately they subtitle their videos in English, which is as much for the benefit of domestic audiences as foreign (India has so many languages that English is frequently Indians' only one in common).
- Indi-Pop in general tends to blend English phrases in with Hindi and occasionally Punjabi lyrics, as its target audience is fluent in Hindi and English. Here is an example of typical lyrics
Hindi + EnglishKabhi koi laathi mere liye veggie burger
Kabhi koi laathi mujhe hamburger
Meri mummy ko bulathi meri daddy ko jagaathi
Mujhe God hi bachaaye mujhe raah dikhlaayeEnglish only translationSometimes a girl brings me a veggie burger
Sometimes she brings me a hamburger
She calls my mummy she wakes my daddy
Oh God, save me and show me a way out! - The Wild Tchoupitoulas: Although the record is predominantly in English, it also has the tribe/band singing in Kouri Vini, the native tongue of the Louisiana Creole people, of which many of this albums participants were.
Pinball
- Godzilla (Stern): The Pro version's backglass artwork has signs reading "ピンボール" and "イエティ". Respectively, these are "pinball" and "Yeti"note written in katakana.
Podcasts
- The opening theme of Fat, French and Fabulous begins with a clip from the Canadian public access television show Téléfrançais!, which features a talking pineapple that lives in a dump.
"Je suis un ananas!"
- Pretending to Be People features the Number Plague, whose infectees begin chanting a phrase before violently killing themselves. This phrase, "tawil aleaql" ("طويل العقل" in the original Arabic) is a Google translation of the phrase "long mind" or "long minded."
- Welcome to Night Vale: After returning from his mysterious disappearance, the Apache Tracker is only able to speak Russian. Translating his lines provides some plot foreshadowing.
Puppet Shows
- Scoop and Doozie: Jacques (a talking pair of underpants) is supposedly from "Notre Dame de la Culotte". This means "Notre Dame of the Pants".
- A surprising one from, of all characters, the Swedish Chef in A Muppet Family Christmas. The Chef mostly speaks vaguely Scandinavian-sounding gibberish, with the only identifiable words actually being English, but on two occasions in this special he wishes someone a merry Christmas, and instead of "Meery Chrissen-de-Missen" or whatever, he says something like "Gooda Yula", which is pretty close to the actual Swedish of "God Jul".
Pro Wrestling
- Believe it or not, there was actually a feud based around the Bilingual Bonus; there was a brief period of time where WWE Divas champion Maryse (from Montreal, Quebec, Canada) would come up to Gail Kim and talk about how great a wrestler she is and how she respects her, etc., and then say something in French. This went on for a few weeks until Kim attacked Maryse, revealed she was fluent in French and that she had known the entire time that Maryse was trash-talking her to her face.
- There's a possible variation in this Ring of Honor promo preceding a Montreal show, as Colt Cabana requests the help of Kevin Steen (also from Quebec) in translating "I can't wait to party with everybody in Montreal, ROH style" — what Kevin tells him is "j'ai couché avec ma mère hier" ("I slept with my mom yesterday"). Colt seemingly acts oblivious to the joke other than saying 'sa' instead of 'ma', but Kevin immediately realizes that Colt just switched "my" with "his".
- There's a possible variation in this
Roleplay
- In The Archivist (Worm), Rachel's new alias after the Heel–Face Turn, Skýla, means "Bitch" in Greek. However, it can also mean "Protector" in Old Icelandic, fitting perfectly with her Reformed, but Not Tamed character while still allowing for Plausible Deniability.
- The island where the We Are All Pirates' Revenge starts is called Inmundo, which is Spanish for "filthy", just to show that some of the characters have a lowly beginning.
Tabletop Games
- Chez Geek: The flavor text for the card "Caesar's Gallic Wars" says, in Latin, "Gaul is now divided into three parts. I believe Elvis is alive."
- In one of the d20 Modern adventures (Le Chien de l'Onyx (although in proper french, it would be Le Chien d'Onyx (The Onyx Dog)), a captive NPC you can free is called Delacey Otage (Otage is French for Hostage).
- The Discworld Roleplaying Game setting "A Fist Full of Tunes You Can Whistle" features a lot of Gratuitous Spanish, since it's set in a Spaghetti Western area of the Disc. The town the setting is based around is called Mallo Burro, which means it shares its name with another rural village on the Disc, many miles away: Bad Ass.
- The Dresden Files: The illustration of Eldest Gruff shows him carrying a staff engraved with Norse runes. Translating them into Latin letters yield the phrase "Donuts are tasty". Similarly, the runes on Harry's staff usually spell "Matrix". Yet another runeline present in the RPG book translates to "Ou are very smart." and includes a helpful comment from Bob that Harry forgot the Y.
- The One Ring is full of inscriptions in the Dwarven runes from The Hobbit: each page of the books features a line from the rhyme on the One Ring, and the maps in the core rulebook are edged with lines from the song the Dwarves sing in Beorn's house.
- Shadowrun: The Genova-Milano-Torino sprawl — one of several "feral cites" where law and order have completely broken down, Mega Corps do as they please, resources are scarce and life nasty, brutish and short — is typically referred to as GeMiTo for short. In Italian, a gemito is a moan or a groan such as one made by someone in fear, pain or despair.
- Warhammer Fantasy Battle:
- Bretonnia is full of references to French. The city of L'Anguille has a name that literally translates to "the eel". Guess which fish are common in the river that runs through the City, and which features prominently on the city's coat of arms.
- The Empire has more than its fair share of Germanities. There is a villain in one of the adventure modules named Zahnarzt. Yes, just so you would understand how evil he was, they named him "dentist". The same adventure also prominently featured a clerk named Kugelschreiber (ballpoint pen).
- The high temple of the goddess Myrmidia in Atldorf is called the Temple of Myrmidia Incazzata. In Italian, "incazzato/incazzata" is a vulgar way of saying that someone is very angry (it's derived from "cazzo", which means "cock" or "dick").
- Kazador Dragonslayer, the King of Karak Azul, is known for his habit of hunting orcs and goblins recreationally and is named after the Spanish word for "hunter".
- Tzeentch is typically stated to be known by the Cathayans as Chi'an Chi. In modern pinyin, this would be most closely equivalent to Jiān Qí (奸奇; the "Qí" is pronounced like "Chi"); Jiān (奸) means "traitorous" or "deceiving", while Qí (奇) means "strange" or "bizarre", thus giving a final name that means something like "treacherous strangeness" or "deceitful strangeness".
- Warhammer 40K:
- The Blood Drinkers, a Blood Angles successor chapter that practices secret blood-drinking rituals to control the Red Thirst, are based on the planet of San Guisaga. Sanguisuga is the Latin and Italian word for "leech", and literally means "blood sucker".
- There's a Greater Daemon of Tzeentch by the name of M'Kachen, who harbours a grudge against Grey Knight Brother-Captain Arvann Stern. "M'Kachen" is a play on the Cantonese phrase ham gaa chaan, which roughly translates to 'your whole family dies'.
Theatre
- The Hungarian in Chicago is left untranslated. Hunyak's monologue in "Cell Block Tango" translates to, "What am I doing here? They say my famous lover held down my husband and I chopped his head off. But it's not true. I am innocent. I don't know why Uncle Sam says I did it. I tried to explain at the police station but they didn't understand."
- Older Than Steam: Princess Katherine's language lesson and the courting scene in Shakespeare's Henry V both contain untranslated French. The latter is funny mostly for King Henry's unsubtle mangling of the language. The former is basically a scene-long build-up to two predictable and filthy sound puns.
- In The Musical of The Wedding Singer, as part of the finale, the characters recap the entire show, including one who sings a verse in Filipino. The next singer's verse, appropriately, is "For those of you who speak Filipino, you know that things ended up the way they should."
Visual Novels
- Artificial Nexus: If you can read hexadecimal, you can decode the error messages on the Game Over screen, which sometimes contain Foreshadowing or other clues as to what's going on.
- C14 Dating: The game is set in the French-speaking part of Belgium and English tends to be used by others strictly for Melissa, Sherri or Rosemarie's benefit, so French dialog pops up each time French speakers are seen talking with each other or non-anglophone background characters. Things that can be enjoyed by understanding French include Deandre telling a bunch of schoolchildren who are visiting the cave that he's digging for gold. For the record, the aforementioned cave is an archeological site in which the vast majority of remains are from bears.
- A Little Lily Princess: Mariette, Sara's French maid, has several lines in French that don't get any sort of translation, so they are best understood by a player who can read French.
- Magical Warrior Diamond Heart: Alex and Clover speak both English as well as Spanish and French respectively, and will often speak in their other languages without any translation provided. Clover's French dialogue in particular reveals she has quite the potty-mouth.
- Melody gives one that is possibly unintentional. The protagonist and title character play “Fussball,” a table game named after a real-world one based on soccer. “Fussball” means “soccer” in German.
- SC2VN uses Korean titles and slang in dialogue. It also has Korean characters in a couple of the backgrounds.
- Tavern Talk:
- One of Zephir's many names is Kumo. In the good ending of "The Lagoon of Tranquility", Fable suggests this name, while the Innkeep says that Kumo is either stealthy as a spider or soft as a cloud, and "kumo" is Japanese for "spider" or "cloud" depending on the kana.
- The achievement for getting the good ending of "The Parent Trap" is called "Katallage", which is Greek for "reconciliation".
- Wingman DX features French, Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, and Japanese in addition to English. Much of the non-English text references the fact that many players won't be able to translate it, reveals future plot elements (including one character's ending), and contains other untranslated jokes.
Web Animation
- Apukunapa Kutimuyñin: As he is introducing himself as the radiant sun, Inti derides the humans and lesser gods below him as a bunch of pathetic runas and apus fooling around. This, he says mainly in Spanish, with the words for human and lesser god being in Quechua.
- The Roybertito's add from Dr. Tran is mostly in spanish. As such, English speakers may miss things like the narrator expressing surprise that people "realmente se comen esa mierda" (are actually eating that shit).
- Danganronpa But Really Really Fast: Sayaka Maizono's Dying Clue is changed to an Italian sentence that translates to "My life was ended by Leon Kuwata".
- A Fox in Space: James is confronted on a train by a pair of VIA agents, one of whom is mute and communicates in ASL. When James refuses to be questioned, the mute agent signs something to his partner and James gets visibly tense in response. If you know sign, you'll know why James is so quickly put on edge.
James: You know I'm walking off this train.
Mute Agent: (looks at his partner) This is why I reminded you to bring your gun today.
Partner: My partner seems to think-
James: I know what he said.
- In gen:LOCK, the ubiquity of Augmented Reality, called Mixed Reality in-universe, means any character can speak any language with full confidence that all of their listeners will understand, leading to untranslated remarks in Spanish, Russian, Scottish Gaellic, and Farsi peppering the dialogue of the hugely multicultural cast. Exceptions include a few Farsi remarks from Yaz in the first season finale, which are subtitled as it's semi-necessary to know their context, and all of the dialogue from Kazu, which is entirely in Japanese and entirely subtitled.
- The Hated Child Is The Reincarnated Queen: Megumi's reincarnation spell is actually in French. Translated to English, it goes "I bless this person for a new and better life to be happy, to be."
- Helluva Boss:
- In the episode "The Circus", Stolas has a singing number about his relationship with Blitzo while looking at a book with the title "Asmodean Crystals" and text in runes that explains that the crystals are used by demons to access the mortal realm. (The text also ends with a humorous comment about writing in runes.) This foreshadows his plan to give Blitzo a crystal so that he no longer needs to borrow Stolas's grimoire, so that they can stop their transactional relationship and maybe start a real one.
- Fizzarolli's incredibly accurate Italian while distracting Crimson's goons. (Crimson is notably confused/offended.) As lyricist Sam Haft said, "[Fizzarolli] may have the most Italian name in hell, but sadly, it appears he does not speak the language"
Puzza lasagne (stink lasagna)Contorni limoncello, forte, piano (side dish Limoncello, loud, soft)Buongiorno, a la vongole (good morning, with clams)Luigi, Firenze, Bucatini (Luigi, Florence, bucatini)Cinghiale, cinghiale (wild boar, wild boar) - The Mighty Grand Piton: Grand Piton says "Mwen sé Grand Piton" at the end of the short, Saint Lucian Creole for "I am Grand Piton".
- RWBY: at one point, Taiyang addresses his daughter Yang with the pet name "my sunny little dragon". That is almost literally what her full name (Yang Xiao Long) means in Chinese.
- In Shrapnel, Potato and Pavel have a habit of slipping into Russian here and there when they talk.
Webcomics
- There is quite a number of Meaningful Name characters named after Greek words in Aisopos:
- Elli is named after "Ellios" the Greek word for "sun" as stated in the first chapter.
- Frontis means "care" ie to look after somebody.
- Archius means "principle". He is certainly a man who sticks by them.
- Kollos literally means 'Ass', and his main characteristic is that he is a Jerkass.
- Chrysa literally means "golden", which fits her warm motherly personality.
- Theo means "God", but it doesn't have any meaning. It's simply a very common Greek name, which is why the prisoner and later Aesop use it to hide their true identity.
- Blind Girl:
- When Blind Girl is showing off her Bocchi the Rock! themed sock and making a pun on its name, her other sock has a long paragraph explaining the joke in French:
Blind Girl's Sock: c'est bocchi la chaussette parce qu'en fait, le titre de l'anime c'est bocchi the rock donc j'ai remplacé le r par un s et ça fait sock, et sock ça veut dire chaussette. voilà c'est cool ahah, c'est funny funny rigolo on s'tappe des barres ahahah translation
- One strip shows Blindy and Blondie hanging out while Blindy is listening to a German rock song about a woman called Claudia who has sex with a German Shepherd Dog. Blondie (who speaks German) is giving her a really weird look.
- When Blind Girl is showing off her Bocchi the Rock! themed sock and making a pun on its name, her other sock has a long paragraph explaining the joke in French:
- In a strip of Chopping Block, Butch meets a French speaker who he thinks is either telling him to kill for Beelzebub, or asking where the bathroom is — he opts for the first to be safe. If you understand the French, it turns out that, against all odds and logic, Butch actually guessed right.
- Cirque Royale: The native language Unicorns speak, Unicornish, is Swedish, and is sprinkled throughout from them.
- In this strip of Ctrl+Alt+Del, Lucas' binary quote translates to "get lost, fucktard".
- Darkest Night: Mags and her abuela (grandma) speak untranslated Spanish to each other.
- A minor one, but in this Darths & Droids comic, the title is in binary. When translated to ascii, it reads "Sunset." Which is hilarious because Tatooine is a binary star system. It really is a binary sunset.
- Dolmistaska: A lot of the signs in the mall are written in (Canadian) French, and some of the security guards can be seen swearing in that language too. PM has a brief exchange in Spanish with Mateo the janitor before switching back to English – unless it's also Quebec French with Translation Convention in effect.
- In the beginning of Issue #12 of The Dreamer, Benjamin Tallmadge says to Nathan Hale in Latin, "Poena absentiae non excusandae probatio collegii dies quinque et admonitio publica est. Decem pro furciferis Linoniae."note
- In Everyday Heroes, the nonsense phrase used as a Running Gag also appears in Spanish and Thai.
- Also, Carrie got her habit of exclaiming "Holy cow!" from her Italian grandmother.
- In a parody of the MGM lion, when Steve gets hungry, his stomach complains "Feed me, for Pete's sake!
- Also, Carrie got her habit of exclaiming "Holy cow!" from her Italian grandmother.
- In Hangin Out, both Tikal and Chasey (Chaos) use "Kim-En" as a battle cry. Fitting for two Mayan-inspired characters, it's Yucatec Maya for "die".
- In Harbourmaster, the "Pulp" storyline features a Fish out of Temporal Water, Richard Stevenson, who doesn't know Standard but does know a little bit of French — a language which the protagonist, Governor Tal Monteblanc, speaks fluently. When the story switches from Richard's viewpoint to the locals', the author drops the Translation Convention for a few pages ... and in the words of one fluent-in-French commenter:
aahahahaha, oh man, I started at Richard's speech bubble
I had to reread it three times before getting it
I'm not criticising just deeply amused: you weren't kidding when you said he was supposed to be bad - Homestuck has an interesting case with The Troll alphabet. It's actually upside-down Daedric Alphabet from The Elder Scrolls. The first name suggestion translates as "Turdodor Fuckball." The "real" name, however, translates as "Trollplanet" which is an accurate description of the world... but which makes the caption a blatant lie, because it claims the guess was exactly right... and that the name of the world is Alternia. The attempted insulting name for Karkat translates as "Bulgereek Nookstain". During their fight scenes, the word "GRIEF" appears instead of the kids' STRIFE.
- With the introduction of Damara Megido, who speaks mostly Japanese (albeit Google Translated-Japanese) and little English, Homestuck now has Bilingual Bonus with an Earth language.
- This strip of Irregular Webcomic! for Quebecois French speakers is ostensibly an extended joke about a mountie, a lumberjack etc etc etc walk into a bar. The second panel actually reads "This comic's author doesn't speak French. He just asked a volunteer from Internet forums to translate a few lines of dialogue for him"—Of course, part of the joke is that the French in question is riddled with obvious mistakes—and the fourth panel reads "Next time you want someone to translate your stupid jokes, please offer me something for my efforts, [expletive!]
- In Jenny Everywhere In…, the author of Dimensional Dynamics and Timestreams, Sophia Jederzeit, is identifiable as a counterpart of established Jenny Everywhere mythos character Sophie Everytime to anyone who speaks a little German.
- In Kidd Commander: The Tain speak in some kind of other language. It's a custom font the author made just for this, and shows up a bit for some confusing foreshadowing and commentary. For those who want an easier time deciphering it, the Extras page is gracious enough to have four phrases, with all 26 letters of the alphabet used in them, for a complete translation key. Of course, that doesn't mean the text in the comic itself is any easier to read, sometimes going behind things like characters or edges of panels, or the text circles around so if you're trying to read it you have to turn either your screen or your head upside down.
- Lore Olympus: Episode 40 features Hades speaking unsubtitled Greek. His command to the spirits in Tartarus, "Συγκαλεῖσθε," means "Assemble." His last line of the episode is "Εἰμί βασιλεύς ἀπαίσιος" - "I am a terrible king."
- Lotta Svärd: Women of War: Text written by the characters, as well as sound effects, are often written out in Finnish. Only some of this gets translated in foot notes.
- In the Maddie series and its spin-off Outsiders, Ebony Larsson is demonstrated to be proficient in both English and Danish, and can switch between the two easily. It is revealed in flashbacks that Ebony's native tongue is Danish, and that she struggled with English at a young age; preferring instead to stay silent. It was only after her future girlfriend Siobhan Pattinson moved to Ebony's island home that she was able to start learning to speak English properly.
Ebony: I... I don't speak much. English is not good with me.
- In Maddie on the Island Hue, Maddie is revealed to be fluent in both English and German. This is due to her grandfather, a soldier in the British Army of the Rhine in West Germany married a local girl and thus her German lingual heritage has been handed down.
Maddie: Mein Freund Andy ist ein fantastischer Koch. Aber er hat wilde Haare und fährt wie ein Verrückter!Andy: I hope you're not making fun of me in that language of yours!
- In Maddie on the Island Hue, Maddie is revealed to be fluent in both English and German. This is due to her grandfather, a soldier in the British Army of the Rhine in West Germany married a local girl and thus her German lingual heritage has been handed down.
- Manly Guys Doing Manly Things: In-universe. You know how the Yautja in Predator is constantly clicking? It turns out he is actually churning out a near-endless stream of Bond One Liners some of which, like the one about Jesse Ventura having "a 'hole' lot of free time" are pretty good. The Commander (who apparently speaks fluent Yautja) also comments that the compatibility of language and sense of humor are the reason why humanity and the Yautja are close allies in the non-specific space-future he comes from.
- My Impossible Soulmate: In this High Fantasy stand-alone prequel to Rain (2010), we meet Bonnie, the leader of a gang of thieves who call themselves the Little Bastards. Bonnie used to be named Euphoria but she had a Meaningful Rename when she ran away from her family, changing her name to Bonnie to get a completely fresh start away from them. The bilingual bonus here is that the words "euphoria" and "bonnie" both mean either happiness or well-being, but from very different language roots (Greek and French/Latin respectively).
- In this The Non-Adventures of Wonderella strip, Wonderella assumes the Spanish-speaking immigrants are thanking her, when they're actually asking if she brought them soap and medicine, and also how her Impact Silhouette includes her cape, because that doesn't make any sense.
- In this strip of Penny Arcade, the Mandalorian roughly translates to: Train your sons to be strong, but your daughters to be stronger, learn mandoa fool. Now hands up how many had to use Google translate or similar to get that?
- Planet of Hats, a Star Trek: The Original Series recap comic:
- In the episode "The Changeling", Uhura's mind is wiped, and Nurse Chapel retrains her in English with Dick and Jane books. Uhura says, "Je, mimi kupata nje ya hii kuku samadi outfit?", which is Swahili for "How do I get out of this chickenshit outfit?"
- In the movie Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, the whalers in the Sea of Alaska get the following dialogue:
Whaler 1: Missä helvetissä me olemme? Tämä ei näytä Itämereltä.
Whaler 2: Sanoinhan, että meidän olisi pitänyt kääntyä Alpukerkin kohdalla vasempaan!
- This is Finnish, and translates to: "Where the hell are we? This doesn't look like the Baltic Sea." "I told you we should have taken that left turn at Albuquerque!"
- In the episode "The Changeling
- Rain (2010): One thing Rain really likes is Thunder, the translation of her favorite manga character’s name Kaminari (雷).
- Record Wisdom Bonus Yield has Blake revert to Japanese on occasion, usually when she's snarking at the other characters.
- Rock Paper Cynic contains a strip that, according to the author, contrasts black humour with infantile joy by exploiting the Language Barrier between French and English. The strip has two separate scripts, running side by side, one in each language. The English is innocent and fairy tale like, while the French veers into darker territory.
- Specifically, the French story goes: "Bertrand was a blueberry. He was suspicious of the English-speaking population. He was a bit racist. He prayed to the gods to massacre his enemies, and one day... he saw them all die."
- Sarilho: with the entire comic being presented in both Portuguese and English versions, there are some slight differences in the text worth checking. Otherwise, a lot of the information portrayed in background media such as posters or written documents is often presented in something that resembles Italian or Spanish.
- Sparkling Generation Valkyrie Yuuki has this as well. The runes on Yuuki's belt? A contraceptive spell. Just remember that Yuuki is a gender changed, magical girl who gets into more "situations"" than the average person, and this could manifest as Fridge Brilliance.
- In the Tricks Of The Trade issue of Spying with Lana, the man on Lana's escape yacht was singing parts of La donna è mobile (The woman is fickle in Italian), the Duke of Mantua's canzone from the beginning of act 3 of Giuseppe Verdi's opera Rigoletto. Interestingly, while the song was an ironic one in the original play (the duke being the "fickle" one), it is appropriate here as Lana is indeed the "fickle woman".
- Stand Still, Stay Silent is generally in English, but sometimes characters (all Scandinavians) speak in their native tongues. It's sometimes funny, and sometimes it's hidden Nightmare Fuel.
- Tuuri and Lalli's conversation in Finnish roughly translates to "I see some mountains... and more mountains... and a funny rock... and mountains".
- Lalli's plead to Moon Goddes is written in Finnish so that it'd keep Kalevala's rhythm. Minna wrote in The Rant what it's about, but only Finnish fans can admire entire version (at least until they translated it for others).
- The Black Speech radio in chapter two. Swedish speakers can see phrases "who am (I)", "sorry", "beware" and repeating "no no no".
- Troll that attacks the Dalhalsen says "help me" in Swedish, which told readers that victims of Rash Illness are still conscious.
- That Deaf Guy: While most strips have the hand gestures matching up with some of the speech bubbles, in #577, Desmond's response in the last panel isn't translated (he's saying, "hahaha, okay, I'll go get some").
- Toki no Tanaka presents all of its background text (signs, etc.) in untranslated Japanese, so this is a common occurrence. Translating the school signs in this page, for example, reveals one to be called "Snow Wood Boarding School" and the other "Tinkle Elementary".
- in This Strip. of Unreality, Dominic and Sarah are speaking perfect Japanese for no discernible reason. The translation is as follows:
Dominic: Sarah-Chan, I want to have sex with you!
Sarah:note I REFUSE!
Dominic: I am sorry! I was just kidding!
Sarah: Dominic-Kun, I still love you, but you need to stop that!
Dominic: Yare Yare, it's so bizarre, having a girlfriend who's so cute but also so tough... - Unshelved used Braille once. The characters in the strip comment that whatever it being said is gross and that you can't say that in a webcomic. It actually translates to "soon the full text of every overdue comic strip will be available on our website so that everybody can enjoy them." note
- The planet Dërt in Wizard & Giant is a play on how "Earth" can mean this planet, but it can also mean, well, dirt. The Bilingual Bonus comes in because Earth is "here" while dort is German for "there" or "that place" and dërt is Turkish for "pain," or "sorrow," and it certainly is a place of hardship.
- This xkcd has a Bilingual Bonus in the alt-text in Lojban. It roughly translates as "Fedora man is going to conquer the world." Roughly, though, since you know how imprecise English is. It actually roughly means that he's teasing, but can we still be friends?
- In Yokoka's Quest, the names of the individual spirits in the Poker Gang are the French names of their respective card suits: Coeur (hearts ♥), Carreau (diamonds ♦), Trèfle (clubs ♣), and Pique (spades ♠).
- Jack's speech in You've Gotta Be Kitten Me! is peppered with German, helping to make the smart, savvy, yet startlingly emotional businesscat the most colorful character in a very colorful colorful cast. All of Jack's swearing is in German, in the style of Getting Crap Past the Radar, but translations are provided.
- "Rosa Amarilla" is Spanish for "yellow rose," which is in turn a symbol for friendship. In Zombie Ranch, Suzie's mistrust for Rosa during their first meeting is doubly compounded when you know that Rosa just gave a potential business partner an obviously false name calculated specifically to inspire trust.
Web Original
- Chaos Fighters: Chemical Warriors-RAKSA: While RAKSA is the nickname of Rakion Kalsa, Malay speakers can tell that this novel revolves around mercury.
- Froge from Froghand's occasional and arbitrary foray into French, such as the "The Froge Festivities" from "Le Fêtes Du Froge". Even mentioned at the bottom of the page as "Gratuitous French".
- Pretty Pretty Please I Don't Want to Be a Magical Girl: The Pretty Pretty Please part of the logo is written in katakana.
- SCP Foundation: SCP-190-DE is Thor and Sif from Norse Mythology running a goat-drawn food truck that specializes in döner kebab. Why döner? Because Thor is the god of thunder, and the German word for "thunder" is "donner".
- Whateley Universe: "Quoth the Ninja, Nevermore!" has a Bilingual Bonus. The superpowered ninjas raiding the school (as a Yama Dojo graduation exercise) form a Five-Man Band, and their names are all jokes in Japanese. Their given names are all types of food, as in tons of anime, while their last names all have hidden meanings.
Web Video
- A.I. Brainrot Animals: If you know Italian or Indonesian, you can get actual facts and lore about the characters. Some examples:
- Tralalero Tralalà is an angry gamer who spews profanity-filled rants when his grandma interrupts him and his son while playing Fortnite.
- Lirilì Larilà is presented as the subject of a documentary, whose host is interrupted by the arrival of his uncle Ramon who chastises him for going in a place with no wi-fi. The host claims that he was trying to understand whether Lirilì could put on clothing or not.
- Brr Brr Patapim has an altercation with a frog named Slim, who stole his hat. A wizard helps him by suggesting to tie Slim to a balloon so that he flies away.
- Tung Tung Tung Sahur will hunt people who skip sahur three times, with his presence signified by a "tung tung tung" sound.
- Twitch streamer The 8-Bit Drummer:
- He used to read out ingredients on anything he could find in the drumming room as a practical joke if someone in the chat were to try and make him play while he was talking. At one point, he finished reading one side of a product and moved onto the other side... only to realise that it was a French translation, since he picked up the item in question in Canada.
- More recently, he tried reading the instructions for his new microphone to fix peaking issues. Problem was... the instructions were in German. As he put it, his attempt at reading it sounded like he was speaking Spanish.
- In Demo Reel, Rebecca's Italian bosses call her a "stunad", which she happily thinks is their language word for "bright". In actually, it's Italian-American slang for a stupid person, and in context, they're using it to call her a "bimbo who'll take the fall when they get found out".
- Filthy Frank does this often with Japanese. For instance, in one of his dwellings, he has a parchment on the wall which says "Niggas in Paris" in katakana. He often uses Japanese in his videos and puts subtitles on the screen to translate it, and while his Japanese 101 videos always have valid subtitles, his other videos often include lines which are deliberately translated as something else.
Subtitles: Are you ready to have some fun? I sure am!
Frank: [in Japanese] There are two Jews in my closet. They're both dead. - Economy Watch: No subtitles are given during Jimmy Garcia and Ronaldo Garcia's Spanish rant over Franco in "The Economics of Healthcare", so the entire thing is in uncensored Spanish.
- In a Foil, Arms and Hog sketch. The extra dialogue at the end of “Ceoil agus Ól” probably wouldn’t have gotten past YouTube’s filters if not for the fact that it was in Irish.
- In the 2020 Philippine BL Drama Gameboys, Cairo's ending response when asked by Gavreel what he wants to do while lying down in bed with him at the end is translated in english subtitles as "It's up to you, baby". While a valid translation of "Ikaw, baby", the line can also be translated as the more direct "You, baby".
- While all conversations in French Baguette Intelligence are in English, Fuck Cares sometimes says things in French.
- In Dark Humor vs "Dark Humor", he says 'Tu sais, j’ai l’impression que si j’avais tout expliqué en Français tu aurais compris à-peut-près la même chose: C’est a dire: Rien.', which translates to 'You know, I have a feeling that if I had explained all of this in French you would have understood more or less the same thing: Nothing.'
- In Dark Humor vs "Dark Humor"
- H+ has several characters who speak Finnish, then there is a lot of Italian going around, both of which, if you understand the language, gives you an idea of things going on in the background.
- Hila from h3h3productions has used her Isreali Hebrew to interpret snippets of videos.
- Inverted in Hitler Rants, not only understanding German wouldn't have you know anything extra, it takes away the fun of it immediately.
- JourneyQuest: In Episode 1, "Skald" is the Orcish translation for "Bard", and Skald is the Old Norse translation for "Bard".
- Ninjabridge has Haku, who does the same as above, all the time no less.note
Subtitles: NOW where is he?!
Haku: [in Japanese] Big boobs are good!- The disclaimer for Episode 7 was supposedly read out by Haku, although in reality he was reading the theme to The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air in Japanese.
- In The Nostalgia Critic's review of The Last Airbender, the Japanese in the intro parody reads "This movie sucks."
- One episode of The War Owl's "Solo Queue to Global" https://youtu.be/wxlBciYduUA?t=383 has French title cards with English translations. They don't *quite* line up...
- In SF Debris' review of "The Naked Now", he makes a quip mistaking the Cyrillic letter З on the Tsiolkovsky's dedication plaque for the Arabic numeral 3. Then in a Brick Joke, he correctly uses it in place of the Latin Z when calling Wesley a "spaz — S, P, A, three, spaz!".
- In The Time... Guys, Dr. Chronos is very bad at Spanish, as seen in "Dinner... TIME".
Doc: Ah, mi hijo! How was your español testículo? [Translation: Ah, my son! How was your testicle Spanish?]
- Uncle Dane: The title for "新入り! You Underestimate The Power Of 短絡 !" is partially Japanese. When translated, it reads: "Newcomer! You Underestimate The Power Of Short Circuit!"
- In The With Voices Project, the title for Episode 2 of Undertale With Voices: Pacifist, Les Freres Sans Peau, translates to "The Brothers Without Skin."
- YidLife Crisis: In "Sukkanabis", as Chaimie enters Leizer's sukkah, he says "Tabarnac!" (subtitled as "What the f—?"). Another name for a sukkah is also a tabernacle, but this is clearly also an example of Quebec French profanity, which is known for Catholic-related terms.
Western Animation
- Adventure Time:
- Lady Rainicorn only speaks Korean, so all of her lines are this. Usually what she says can be interpreted via context clues. This being Adventure Time, it is of course used for adult humor at times. For example, one early episode has Lady tell a joke to Finn and Jake. It causes Jake to blush, and he quickly makes the excuse that there is a translation barrier. Her 'joke', translated, is "Remember when we ran naked through that field? That farmer was so offended!" Which is funny, because Jake and Lady Rainicorn never wear clothes.
- Runs in the episode Into the Nightosphere, where at one point Jake randomly belts out "Jouzu de Ganbate ne," which is loosely Japanese for "You try your best very well."
- Princess Bubblegum occasionally uses German, such as for exclamations or greetings.
- The Amazing World of Gumball:
- In the episode "The Countdown", Gumball and Darwin are messing around with time and end up in a timeline where everyone speaks angrily in German. The German sentences, however, don't match what the angered tone suggests.
Sarah: Ich geh gern ins Diskothek! (I like to go to the disco!)
Tobias: Keine Geschwindigkeitsbegrenzung auf der Autobahn! (No speed limit on the freeway!)- In "The Fraud", there's a gag that involves Darwin opening Gumball's head to show off a part of his brain. When he needs to close it again, he crams the brain pieces back in at random and asks how Gumball is feeling. Gumball responds, in sudden, surprised, fluent Danish, "Jeg tror der er noget, der er skruet helt forkert sammen!" ("I think something got badly mixed up in there!"). Darwin then shakes him a bit and he's right as rain.
- American Dad!:
- In one episode, Steve is deceived by Roger to think he has been accepted in Hogwarts. Really Roger just sent him with drug dealers, one of them told Steve "Lavate las manos" which he believed to be a spell, actually was "Wash your hands" in Spanish.
- Another episode features a running gag involving a fictional Spanish-speaking singer named Cilantro. One of Cilantro's songs plays during an action sequence and the song consists of Seth MacFarlane spouting phrases such as "The cat is the devil" in Spanish, over and over again.
- Literally, the song goes, The dog, the dog, is my heart, the cat, the cat, the cat is not good. Cilantro dances a lot, Cilantro is very famous, Cilantro is the man with the cheese of the devil.
- As a matter of fact "cilantro", in Spanish, can refer to the entire plant, generally called "coriander" in English, whereas in English, the word "cilantro" generally refers to the leaves of the plant.
- Amphibia: Anne says a couple of sentences in Thai in "Lily Pad Thai" that comes with subtitles. The only Thai that isn't translated comes from Anne's usage of Ba (crazy), calling all the elders who surround her the "Ba train".
- Avatar: The Last Airbender and its sequel The Legend of Korra:
- Both series use Chinese characters for all in-universe writing. Typically everything said on them is read aloud by the characters, but some which aren't can give insight to the story, if translated.
- "The Southern Air Temple": Aang names the lemur Momo after it steals a peach. If you don't speak Japanese, it's a weird non sequitur, but "momo" is Japanese for "peach".
- Zuko, hiding in the Earth Kingdom, gives his uncle the alias "Mushi", to which Iroh reacts in irritation. "Mushi" is Japanese for "insect", so it's understandable why Iroh wouldn't like that name. It also adds a level of depth to why Iroh would then say that his nephew is called "Junior", claiming that he was named after his father (whom Zuko hates).
- In Korra, one of the new Airbenders is named "Otaku". This is Japanese for "geek" or "nerd" (though more extreme and derogatory in meaning than those words). Fittingly, he has an almost encyclopedic knowledge of Air Nomad culture.
- Beast Wars has Cybertronix, a simple substitution cypher. Sometimes it's used for gibberish, sometimes it's plot relevant, and sometimes it's just used for in-jokes and demographically inappropriate humour. For example this◊ actually translates to "If you can read this seek help".
- CatDog has Lube, who occasionally speaks Spanish. This is most notable in "Sweet and Lola", in which he meets the Latina Lola Caricola, to which he exclaims, "!Finalmente, alguien en esta ciudad con quien pueda hablar español!" note
- Cow and Chicken: Cow's superhero alter ego Supercow only speaks Spanish, which is left untranslated. In "Who Is Supercow", Chicken ends up posing as Supercow to save his sister and also speaks Spanish, but he reads off nonsensical sentences from a Spanish phrase book and pronounces the words horribly.
Chicken: Oye, ¡¿Dónde esta el baño?! note
Red Guy: I don't know what you just said, but I DON'T LIKE THE WAY YOU SAID IT! - In The Critic, Vlada's restaurant is named L'ane Riche, which is French for "The Wealthy Jackass."
- In Dan Vs. The Bank, the bank has a sign reading, "Ni Parolas Esperante," or "We speak Esperanto" in English.
- In The Dragon Prince, Amaya is deaf and communicates with ASL with her translators Gren or Kazi nearby. However, on one occasion she gets a little vulgar and Gren has to replace a swear on the fly. Deaf and hearing impaired people know exactly what she said.
- DuckTales (2017) does this fairly often. In the second episode, Webby lies to her grandmother about being at dinner with a man who speaks only Swedish. Cue Launchpad (who is high on snake venom) taking the phone and speaking Swedish. His pronunciation is awful (likely because the voice actor doesn't speak Swedish), but the words are actually Swedish.
- Family Guy:
- The episode "McStroke" has an Italian guy tells Peter he is crazy for faking Italian.
- All the signs in Asiantown are nonsense. The "Chinese Takeout" has the exact same English words written below it in Japanese letters, and one street sign says "I love you". Other store signs say "1234567" or "Monday"
- In Halloween on Spooner Street, the line Quagmire says his Japanese grandfather used to say translates to "As long as a man has pearls between his toes, he will never be poor."
- During a scenario where Hitler has a talk show, the phone number includes Hitler screaming "DU WERDEST EINE KRANKENSCHWESTER BRAUCHEN!" note , which translates to "You will need a nurse."
- During a trip through Germany, Brian annoys a German tourist guide and he belts out "SIE WERDEN NICHT BELEIDIGUNG DEUTSCHLAND!" note , meaning that "You will not insult Germany!".
- In Firebuds, Bo's last name is Bayani, which is Filipino for "hero", which he aspires to be as a firefighter.
- Futurama:
- When Amy Wong gets mad, she will often speak Chinese in a tone implying that she's swearing. However, she's actually saying very innocuous phrases and just using an angry tone.
- Binary code is also used with Bender here and there; among other things, his apartment in "I, Roommate" reads '$', and a binary message in blood in "The Honking" is the number 666.
- In one episode of the new (2010) series, the crew travels in time and Prof. Farnsworth takes a stop to kill Adolf Hitler. Just before Farnsworth's death ray blows him up, Hitler is yelling in an official speech: "Betrachten Sie meinen Schnurrbart!" "Observe my moustache!"
- Gravity Falls:
- A chant in "Dreamscaperers" contains a number of Latin phrases, including a fake one that pokes fun at Inception.
- Subverted in The Golf War, where the Littliputtians of the Eiffel Tower hole act like stereotypical French people, but don't actually speak French (with one member instead shouting out random French phrases in an attempt to fake it while subtitles show that he has no idea what he's saying).
- In "Soos and the Real Girl", the start menu of a Japanese dating sim has an option which means "Spontaneous Combustion" in Japanese.
- In the episode "The Last Mabelcorn", Grunkle Stan is working with a business partner to smuggle pugs across the border. To get him to hurry up after Ford comes near, Stan tells him "No te preocupes. Vamos, vamos." note
- The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy:
- In the episode "Here There Be Dwarves", the dwarves shout "Lave sus Manos!" ("Wash your hands") as a battle cry, rather than "Vaya con Dios!" ("Go with God").
- In the episode "My Peeps", while Grim is zapping Billy's eyes to try and fix them, Billy briefly sees Grim and Mandy in an Animesque style, and Mandy says "His eyes aren't fixed yet" in Japanese.
- Hector's House was originally a French animation series that later became famous through the English dubbed version, however, all writing that appears on the screen is still in French so any French speakers will read it instantly. For any that don't, the characters read out what they've written in English to translate, but it comes off to the audience as a different writing style that only the characters in their universe have.
- There's one overlapping with Meaningful Name in an episode of Inspector Gadget, with a character named Iji Waruda-san who is the Japanese counterpart of Doctor Claw. Iji Waruda sounds like a plausible Japanese name to the uninitiated, but it's simply a rearranging of the phrase "Ijiwaru Da", which can be translated to English as the blatantly appropriate "I am malicious."
- One episode of Kaeloo had Mr. Cat and Stumpy watch the trailer for the in-universe Mr. Coolskin movie, which is entirely in Japanese. The trailer's credits state that the movie was made by Rémi Chapotot and Tristan Michel, who are ''Kaeloo'''s creator and art director respectively.
- One episode of King of the Hill revolves around Enrique and his marital problems. When Hank takes Enrique to confront his wife, Yolanda, they start arguing in Spanish. They say some pretty amusing things, like Yolanda complaining that Enrique was always going on about how great Hank is. "*makes kissy noises* Hank is strong, Hank is fun!"
- Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts: In episode 5, there's a snack bag that has the word "감자"note on it, which is Korean for "potato".
- Madeline regularly had untranslated French peppered throughout the dialogue, meaning that viewers could sometimes pick up little extras if they knew some French. The movie Lost in Paris was especially heavy with this.
- In Miraculous Ladybug, our heroine Marinette Dupain-Cheng lives in a bakery run by her parents. "Du pain" means "of bread" in French, and "cheng" means "to make" in Chinese, so her last name roughly translates as "maker of bread".
- Molly of Denali: The characters all pepper their dialogue with words and phrases from various indigenous languages. Tooey's dad also drops a few Japanese words once in a while. Most of the time translations are provided either directly or by context. The main exceptions to this are during performances of Native songs.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
- In "The Cutie Pox", one of the cutie marks Apple Bloom gets makes her compulsively speak French. The first thing out of her mouth translates as "Darn it, more cutie marks! What is this? I'm speaking French!"
- In "Pinkie Pride", Pinkie Pie sings a brief bit of Spanish while dancing atop a giant piñata, a traditional Mexican song about trying to break open a piñata.
Dale, dale, dale
No pierdas el tino
Por que si los pierdes
Pierdes el camino!translation
- In one episode of The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, Rabbit plays a highwayman known by the name El Conejo during a fantasy sequence at the start.
- Luz and Camila Noceda from The Owl House speak fluent Spanish and will often slip into it when they get emotional or are speaking with each other. A notable example of this for the former is in "Through the Looking Glass Ruins", where Luz twice repeats her mother's words to herself ("No te preocupes, todo va a salir bien",English and "Nada funcionará a menos que lo haga funcionar"English) to restore her confidence.
- Perfect Hair Forever: In the final episode, Young Man brings out a scroll with a nude image of Brenda on it to tell Gerald that her name is really Margaret. The Japanese text on it actually translates to "Supernude Brenda," meaning that his own evidence disproves him.
- Phineas and Ferb:
- The show's creator voices the Not-German character Dr. Doofenshmirtz, and knows German himself, which has actually led to them getting to say, "Perry the Platypus, you scared the shit out of me!" in German.
- In Summer Belongs to You!, Jeremy goes to Paris and stays at an Hotel called "La Poubelle", which is French for "The Trash Can".
- In "One Good Turn", during the Dance of Contrition, the mayor of Gimmelshtump moves to France and refuses to speak French. He paints the digit 9 over a sign with the word "neuf" ("nine" in French"), and exclaims "Nein!" ("No!" in German).
- Subverted in "Run Away Runway" when Gaston le Mode says Candace is his "coup de crayon" (pencil neck). Ferb points out the translation.
- Played for Laughs in "The Beak" when Khaka Peu Peu introduces himself, making the town laugh because his name sounds like "Caca Poo Poo". "Caca" is Spanish for "poop".
- ReBoot, taking place in a computer, has had a few jokes hidden in binary. In the episode "Talent Night", one of the tryouts was a stand-up comedian. His "act" consisted of him saying "One" and "Oh" a looong pattern, and when he was finished, it had everyone falling over with laughter. According to the wiki, he said, "TAKE MY WIFE PLEASE".
- In the Regular Show episode "More Smarter", Mordecai and Rigby accidentally drink too much of a brain-enhancing formula and start viewing everyone around them in bizarre ways while everybody else can only hear them speaking in Latin. There's a few grammatical errors, but their argument is as follows:
Mordecai: Whose theory is wrong?
Rigby: Theory?! Your theory started this whole thing!
Mordecai: And it would have made me the master and the other an imbecile. - An episode of Rocko's Modern Life had Rocko, Heffer and Filbert watching a Spanish soap opera in which a man is tearfully telling a woman something that translates into "Maria, this book is late, I am going to the library."
- In Samurai Jack, the Scotsman works some Scots into his insulting tirades directed at Jack and others. Some words are quite archaic, but others are commonly used in modern Scotland.
Scotsman: Whaddaya think of that, Mr. Pyjama-wearing, basket face, slipper wieldin', clype-dreep-bachle (bad-mannered, dissapointing old shoe), gether uping blate maw (little mommy's boy), bleathering gomreil (idle-chatting idiot), jessie oaf-looking scooner (effeminate, stupid nuisance), nyaff plookie shan (bad-looking pimple-faced coward), milk drinkin', soy-faced shilpit (weakling, also a racist slur against Asians), mim-moothed (pretentious) snivelin', worm-eyed, hotten-blaugh (sickly-looking), vile-stoochie (small, poor fighter), cally-breek-tattie (fool, lit. "trousered potato")?
- The Simpsons:
- In "Thirty Minutes Over Tokyo", the family goes on a sadistic game show and the host (George Takei) says that the next question is about Japan. Homer asks "Is the answer 'Japan'?", causing the host to see that that is indeed the answer and then yell at someone offstage. He says "Bakayarou! Dare ga kotau yattanda?", which translates to "You morons! Who came up with that answer?" Later, Bart and Homer speak subtitled Japanese after spending time in a Japanese prison and learning the language. After Homer inadvertently loses the last of their money, he exclaims "Shimatta, baka ni!" which translates as (roughly) "Dammit, I'm such an idiot!" The subtitles read "D'oh!"
- In "Cape Feare", Sideshow Bob claims that his "die Bart die" tattoo is actually German for "the Bart the". While this is true, "die" is actually a German pronoun for females; "der" is used for males.
- South Park:
- When the Antichrist, the Son of Satan, is enrolled at South Park Elementary, his appearances are heralded by a latin choir ominously voicing a sinister chant (a Shout-Out to The Omen). However, the words are Rectum! Domine!, which is Canis Latinicus for "Lord of the Anal Sphincter", or Assmeister.
- In the episode "Good Times With Weapons" the kids are playing with the weapons and imagine themselves as anime characters, complete with a song in Japanese made by Trey Parker (who speaks fluent Japanese), "Let's Fighting Love". The song also has several odd statements in Gratuitous English (including the titular line), and most of the song is profane (but grammatically correct) nonsense and the singer both boasting about his genetalia and admitting how bad the song and his English are. (You can find a translation here.)
- Japanese jokes aplenty in "Chinpokomon" — Chinpoko is Japanese for "very small penis."
- Several episodes feature a fictional video game console, the Okama Gamesphere. "okama" being Japanese slang for a Camp Gay man.
- In "Chickenlover", the alphabet poster above the school blackboard reads "DiOsMiOhAnMaTaDoHaKeNnYbAsTaRdOs", which is Spanish for "Oh my God, they killed Kenny, you bastards".
- The stop sign that Barbrady sees is 멍청이 ("meongcheong-i"), Korean for idiot.
- Also in Pinkeye, the button the Cosmonauts accidentally press to crash the Mir space station is labelled "hoopsie" in Cyrillic script — a possible transliteration of either "oopsie" or "whoopsie".
- The running commentary of Butters crossing the border in "Last of the Meheecans" refers to Cartman primarily as "gordo" ("the fat one").
- 'Mantequilla', Butters' pseudonym in the episode, is Spanish for 'butter'.
- In Season 20, we're introduced to Lennart Bedrager, the CEO of Troll Trace, who has vowed to destroy internet trolls to avenge the death of Freja Ollegard. "Bedrager" essentially means "deceiver" or "fraud" in Danish. Doubles as Foreshadowing since he is also a troll who is only making Troll Trace to cause trouble, and isn't even Danish.
- In a Mysterio episode of The Spectacular Spider-Man, he is chanting in Latin to summon various spells/illusions. Translated, he is saying things that make sense for the sleep and lightning spells, but for the disappearing spell he chants "Thank you for not smoking", then "I believe that Elvis is still alive" for the dragon-summoning spell, and "I can't get no satisfaction" for the Homunculi-summoning spell.
- Star Trek: Lower Decks:
- Smörgås is Swedish for "sandwich," and because the SmorgasBorg program was designed to be an Unwinnable Training Simulation, the trainee will end up as a Borg sandwich (i.e. a victim of a Borg Curb-Stomp Battle).
- Season 3 introduces Admiral Buenamigo, whose name means "Good Friend" as he's friends with Carol Freeman. It becomes an Ironic Name once he's revealed to be an Insane Admiral.
- Star Wars Rebels: The various signs written in Aurebesh actually do spell out what they're supposed to be saying.
- Teen Titans (2003):
- Some of the sillier episodes use a version of the theme song in Japanese. Rather than a straight translation, the lyrics are a Surreal Theme Tune about how the Titans are prepared for things like curfews and mothers' diets. The karaoke version of theme sung in Teen Titans: Trouble in Tokyo is actually a loose translation of the Japanese version into English.
- The twins Más and Menos speak purely in Spanish (save for the time that Control Freak was able to force them to speak English by changing their language settings with his remote), and their dialogue is not subtitled. The language barrier between them and the rest of the cast is usually played for laughs (especially considering the fact that most of their dialogue is hilarious), but it does complicate things near the end of the last season when Menos and most of the rest of the Titans around the world are captured by the Brotherhood of Evil, leaving Más largely unable to communicate with Beast Boy and the few remaining Titans in their rescue mission.
Más and Menos: [together] ¡Más y Menos, sí podemos! (Plus and Minus, yes we can!)
- Some of the sillier episodes use a version of the theme song in Japanese. Rather than a straight translation
- Total Drama: World Tour:
- Alejandro's last name, Burromuerto, is Spanish for dead donkey. "Mal" translates to "Bad" or "Evil" in Latin, Spanish, Italian, and French. In the case of the former, Chris eventually points out the former.
- In the episode "Planes, Trains, and Hot Air Mobiles", after Cody stole first place in the race, the scene cuts to Alejandro cursing in the confessional.
- One of the characters introduced in Season 3 of Voltron: Legendary Defender is named Acxa. Her name may sound weird and unusual but it is an actual word in Esperanto, which when translated into English, it means "dreadful", as in Episode 6 of the season, Acxa accidentally blows up the cargo ship with the shot originally intended to aim at Voltron (though Voltron was planning to blow up the cargo ship anyway in order to stop Lotor's forces from using it), which resulted in Lotor disappointed in her doing so, implying that she was dreadful at following his orders to destroy Voltron in order to stop it from destroying the cargo ship.
- X-Men '97: When one of the Prime Sentinels ask Wolverine why he resists them, he spits back that he has "six reasons", alluding to his Wolverine Claws. He is joined shortly afterwards by Nightcrawler, who says "No, my friend...nine!" This not only refers to Nightcrawler wielding three sabers (one in each hand and a third with his Prehensile Tail), but is also homophonous with the German word for "No"note — Germany being Nightcrawler's country of origin.
Other
- The "Out of Your Friends, Which One Are You?" meme has an example of this. One of the options, "друг" — often shown over a picture of a demon or a villainous character, translates to "friend" in Russian.
Real Life
- The Other Wiki has this.
- Francis E Dec often added short phrases of broken Polish to his rants, usually expressing his love for the place he has been to only once in his life. He would also, despite being a staunch anti-Semite, curse in Yiddish.
- During the Iranian hostage crisis (1979-80), one of the U.S. Marine embassy guards wrote patriotic and anti-Iranian slogans on the walls of his cell, in Spanish. His captors could not read them, and it did not occur to them to ask what the words meant.
- A letter published in the left-of-centre British Newspaper, The Guardian, bemoaned the tendency of the rich English to buy second homes in Wales, thus pricing local Welsh people out of the housing market. It purported to be from a church minister who gave his address as the hamlet of Pobsaes Twlldyn. It was later pointed out to the newspaper that pob saes twll dyn is Welsh for All the English are arseholes. The newspaper now insists all correspondents give a genuine checkable address.
- At the 91st annual Academy Award ceremony, during Trevor Noah's speech presenting the Best Picture nomination of Black Panther (2018), he said: "Growing up as a young boy in Wakanda, I would see T'Challa flying over our village, and he would remind me of a great Xhosa phrase. He says 'abelungu abazi ubu ndiyaxoka' — which means 'In times like these, we are stronger when we fight together than when we try to fight apart.'" Everyone recognized the South Africa-born Noah's claim of being born in Wakanda as a joke, but only speakers of Xhosa realized what he actually said in that language was "White people don't know I'm lying".
- The US state of Ohio is pronounced similarly to the Japanese term for "Good Morning"note , leading to jokes regarding the state's name.
