Worst Translations that Aren't in English.

[Crössγ44]

Everyone knows about that in the past, translating a game into english was mediocre at best, and hilarious at its lowest ( the first Zelda, the entirety of Capcom and Konami game, etc.). But now I've been thinking about other languages, what are some of the worst translations in your native languages? It can be a phrase, dub, even something that became a meme in your country, it just has to be official.

 

[Felipe]

Unfortunately i can think only about an english one. Like the one in your pic above. (it wasnt to avoid english? :P)

Onimusha 3: Jacques Blanc (the character of Jean Reno) says "Adieu" (goodbye in english) twice to Phillip, his friend that died (it happens in the beginning of the game).

The first "Adieu" was translated as "Rest in Peace".

The second "Adieu" was translated as "My Friend".

I wonder how many bad translations were done in the game. This is surely a game that deserves a re-translation.

 

[Frickinfrik]

Probably, the original Spanish translation of Silent Hill. I heard it wasn’t very good.

 

[Yousef]

Some Arabic translations are really mediocre and feel like victim of inexperience. It’s fine though, the passion is clearly there.

 

[Takeuchi]

Not a translation error but in the portuguese translated ROM of Aladdin (SNES) by Capcom there was a bug that just made the first boss undefeatable. In the game, he starts attacking the player fiercely once a hit is landed on him and he's invincible while attacking on that state but is supposed to stop after a few seconds or after being hit by an apple. Not in the portuguese ROM, where he just attacks non-stop keeping the invincible state forever and the player can't do anything but watch, which made finishing the game an impossible task to brazilians kids back then

 

[Lee__Kanker]

In the italian translation of bayonetta they just Dont sub the line "I better have gotten frequent flyier miles off that one" (or something like that")

And they translate The Cardinal Virtue of Fortitude saying "My apologies then" to "Oh well, sorry"

Post automatically merged: Mar 12, 2025

Also because Pokemon's critical hit is foerever translated as "Bad hit!" (bad as in Rough) while every other rpg says "critical"
They were translated by I think One woman whom had no context for anything

 

[TentaclesMod]

Thing is, although english translations in the past could be rather suboptimal, other languages often didn't get translations at all. I think spanish translations only became common around the playstation era, but it was far from applying to all games. Point is, other languages had less bad translations because other languages had less translations, period.

With that said, the original FF7 spanish translation is infamous.

 

[Lee__Kanker]

Thing is, although english translations in the past could be rather suboptimal, other languages often didn't get translations at all. I think spanish translations only became common around the playstation era, but it was far from applying to all games. Point is, other languages had less bad translations because other languages had less translations, period.

With that said, the original FF7 spanish translation is infamous.

FF7 didnt get translated into italian AT ALL, people just importesd the pal uk version; and very few italians know english at a level above elementary\middle school let alone in 1996

I could make a frustrated laundry list of rpgs that didn't come out in italy

• Shadow Hearts
• Valkyrye Profile
• Popolocrois psp
• Beyond the beyond
• Brave Fencer Musashi
• Chrono Cross
• Dragon Quest 7
• Dragon Seeds
• The Atelier Iris trilogy
• Grandia 3 and Xtreme
• The .hack games
• Deception 3
• Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories
• Vanguard Bandits
• All the tail games (I think, or most of em)
• Xenogears...
• I CAN GO ON AND ON AND ON

 

[naizou's iconnaizou]

In the Japanese version of CODMW2, the line "Remember - no Russian." was translated as "殺せ、ロシア人だ。"
When retranslated into English, it means "Kill them, they're Russians."

Originally, the Russian terrorists were being told "Don't speak Russian" to conceal their identity, and the phrase also had a double meaning of denying Russian involvement—"They're not Russians."

On top of that, in the Japanese version, if you follow the order and open fire on Russian civilians, you get a game over due to censorship. However, if you ignore the security guards who retaliate, your allies shoot you, leading to another game over. It was an absurd trap.

 

[Xdqwerty]

• FFVII's official spanish translation
• Translations made by Paladin Knights and Magno
• BoF 1 and 2's translations by Vegetal Translations (they also translated the third game but it was unfinished)

 

[longestseason]

Unfortunately i can think only about an english one. Like the one in your pic above. (it wasnt to avoid english? :P)

Onimusha 3: Jacques Blanc (the character of Jean Reno) says "Adieu" (goodbye in english) twice to Phillip, his friend that died (it happens in the beginning of the game).

The first "Adieu" was translated as "Rest in Peace".

The second "Adieu" was translated as "My Friend".

I wonder how many bad translations were done in the game. This is surely a game that deserves a re-translation.

I am not a professional translator, never worked on a translation project and have no idea how translations are made, so correct me if I'm wrong, but even if the translation isn't 100% accurate, it still works well. Localizing a videogame is not as simple as translating the dialogue as is, the translators also need to readapt all those lines to fit the context (depending on the language and culture). Nintendo usually does a pretty good job in this regard.

I, for instance, wouldn't say your example is the worst translation I've ever seen, but I get what you're saying.

 

[Lee__Kanker]

I also remember the ita translation of metal gear solid somehow mistranslating"we'll see if the man can live up to the legend" to "we'll see if the man can survive to the legend"
The hell does that mean?

 

[Felipe]

I am not a professional translator, never worked on a translation project and have no idea how translations are made, so correct me if I'm wrong, but even if the translation isn't 100% accurate, it still works well. Localizing a videogame is not as simple as translating the dialogue as is, the translators also need to readapt all those lines to fit the context (depending on the language and culture). Nintendo usually does a pretty good job in this regard.

I disagree, a translation must be faithful to the original text UNLESS the strings are impossible to understand when translated, as someone who has been translating programs/emulators for 22 years i can say RARELY a situation such as this happens.

I, for instance, wouldn't say your example is the worst translation I've ever seen, but I get what you're saying.

You can bet it is. I wished i knew more french/japanese to catch more of this stuff. :)

 

[RetroCasual]

Spanish translations of lots of Neo Geo Games seem done half in Latin Spanish, half in Google translator before it existed lol Even there are several spelling mistakes like nonsense inserted letters, absence of accents, dots, commas, spacebars... Happy they focused in arcade style games and didn't release RPGs or games with deep script, but a total neglect.

I noticed it first in most winning quotes within the more popular fighting games of the system (Art Of Fighting, Fatal Fury, King Of Fighters, etc...) but I'm sure that I'd find more mistakes searching among more games localized to what they called "Spanish"...

Despite it, when a child we used to laugh a lot of them, in quotes like "PROBLEMAS HACEN GOLPES, SALGANSE ANTES QUE ME ENOJE", "ESENTONCES VOY A LUCHAR CON TODO MI PODER" from KOF series, or the famous "ENFURESIDO" warning in Super Sidekicks series...

So it is half a shame, half a laugh to most of us. However, I still think that they should have cared much more about Spanish language in their releases.