• Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!

Funny Foreign Language Translation of Fictional Character Names

Status
Not open for further replies.
andythinkpad

andythinkpad

Member
You guys remember the funny literal translations of Chinese animal names, I though we can do a version for the fictional characters name.

X-Men Characters

Cyclops: Laser Eyes
Rogue: Little Brad
Wolverine: Diamond Wolf or Vajra Wolf (wolverine is not an animal Chinese are familiar with. Vajra is a Buddhist word which has been adopted in Chinese language as warrior or diamond.)
Nightcrawler: Blue Devil
Julibee: Huan-Huan (She is Chinese so I guess they just give her normal Chinese name?)
Psylocke: Sharp Butterfly

Deadpool: Dead Samurai (LOL)
Magneto: Mega Magnet King
Juggernaut: Red Tank

The rest are just normal translations
 
In France, Rogue became "Malicia", Nighcrawler "Diablo" and Wolverine "Serval". Could have been worse.

Can't remember much else they changed though.
 
French super-hero names :
Wolverine : Serval (the wolverine animal is called glouton (= glutton) in French, which doesn't sound as cool nor scary)
NightCrawler : Diablo
Banshee : Howler (Hurleur)
Iceman : Iceberg
Juggernaut : Bane (Le Fléau)
 
veryslowhand said:
for some reason Moana is called Vaiana here in Spain
Click to expand...

Same for France. Usually names are translated to be easier to pronounce/remember, avoid double meanings or keep original allusions, but I can't really understand why they would change Moana.
A lot could be said about all the names in Harry Potter being translated, by the way. It makes it quite hard to follow between people who know the local version and those who know the original.

It's funny to see early publications of American comics where they tried to translate as many names as possible, and even when the translation is appropriate it is weird to understand the meaning of it. Like Daredevil was called Casse-Cou (= break neck, which does mean 'dare-devil' after all). They quickly switched to the original name though.
 
Game of Thrones Season 6 spoilers:

The origin of the word Hodor is probably so confusing for non-English speakers, though Turkish translators did manage to get around it. Instead of "Hold the door" he shouts "Stay there" which can be shorted to phonetically sound like "Hodor" in Turkish.
 
French dub of the Back to the Future trilogy:

Calvin Klein = Pierre Cardin
"butthead" = "banane" (banana)
"slacker" = "tocard" (something like loser)
"chicken" = "mauviette" (weakling; they even changed the chicken sound effects into repeating the word "mauviette")
 
Forkball said:
Game of Thrones Season 6 spoilers:

The origin of the word Hodor is probably so confusing for non-English speakers, though Turkish translators did manage to get around it. Instead of "Hold the door" he shouts "Stay there" which can be shorted to phonetically sound like "Hodor" in Turkish.
Click to expand...

Now you're talking about it, I wonder how they did this in various languages.

Names are one thing, but sometimes the translation totally changes the meaning of what characters say. I remember being blown away watching Heat in VO for the first time, because some sentences made no sense in french, and I blamed the writers at the time.
 
Also, Lobezno means Wolf Cub, but the literal translation of Wolverine is Glotón or Carcayú. Carcayú does not sound badass enough, and glotón... Everybody here would understand it as the adjective "gluttonous".

Basically they took the part "Wolf" out of Wolverine and made it smaller because Wolverine is one of the shortest Marvel superheroes. That would be my guess.

Also, Daredevil became "Dan Defensor" (Defender Dan), basically because when that comic got overseas there was a Dictatorship going in Spain. That dictatorship had close ties to the christian church, who would not be too fond of a superheroe with the word "Devil" in his name. The stupid idiots did not consider that Daredevil has no relation with "Devil" when you translate it.
 
A few more comic names in Chinese

Batman: Bat Knight
Spider-man: Spider Knight
Iron Man : Iron Knight (see the pattern?)
Flash: Lightning Knight
Superman: He is just Super Man, not cool enough to be a knight.
 
Alx said:
French super-hero names :
Wolverine : Serval (the wolverine animal is called glouton (= glutton) in French, which doesn't sound as cool nor scary)
NightCrawler : Diablo
Banshee : Howler (Hurleur)
Iceman : Iceberg
Juggernaut : Bane (Le Fléau)
Click to expand...

Same with the wolverine in German ("Vielfraß", glutton). They just kept the English names here for all superheores AFAIK except maybe the occasional "Supermann". I'm generally noticing a lot less translation in names thwese days, be it of characters or media titles. Movies and games rarely receive a localized name, even advertising slogans often stay in English. Pokemon receive translated names which have different puns at times.

The only translation push I see is in computer science where most terms only have an English name and people are looking for suitable translations.
 
Alx said:
French super-hero names :
Wolverine : Serval (the wolverine animal is called glouton (= glutton) in French, which doesn't sound as cool nor scary)
Click to expand...

Oh same as Italian then, where he used to be called Ghiottone.
Was dropped long ago though I think
 
Lobezno means wolf cub, but the word is hard sounding so it doesnt feel less badass. When people here say Lobezno, they are actually not thinking of the animal, but of the character, so when you hear his name you are not inmediately thinking of a small wolf cub.

veryslowhand said:
it is lobezno, not in english


for some reason Moana is called Vaiana here in Spain
Click to expand...

A perfume shop had the rights of Moana in Spain. Italy had a super famous porn actress in the 80's called Moana (that was also midly known in spain. Thats why Italy and Spain had the name chanhed, and portugal, but thats because disney spain usually treats it as the same market with a different language (same as nintendo btw).
 
andythinkpad said:
A few more comic names in Chinese

Superman: He is just Super Man, not cool enough to be a knight.
Click to expand...
Funny enough there's a China based Super-Man now:
nsm-cv5-open-order-vajcst2.jpg
Click to expand...
 
SamVimes said:
I can see why they changed her name in Italy, Moana was one of the two most well-known Italian pornstars.
Click to expand...

Anna Moana Rosa Pozzi (Italian pronunciation: [ˈanna moˈaːna ˈrɔːza ˈpottsi]; 27 April 1961 – 15 September 1994), best known as Moana Pozzi and Moana, was an Italian pornographic actress, actress, television personality, model, politician and writer.
Click to expand...

Why do all your pornstars end up doing politics ? ^_^
 
And X-men is not X-men in Spain, is (was) Patrulla X which can be translated to X-Patrol.

I can understand the change, Hombres X sounds really... porny
 
Kain said:
And X-men is not X-men in Spain, is (was) Patrulla X which can be translated to X-Patrol.

I can understand the change, Hombres X sounds really... porny
Click to expand...

But those are names that are changing because they are not popular enough.
Patrulla x, mujer naravilla, masacre...

I think we got to a point were we are leaving the good spanish sounding ones, while the ones that never sounded good are starting to fade thanks to the movies.

Masacre, even if its a good translation of the word deadpool (and no, its not piscina de muerte, americans that think that know spanish lol), I feel its too fucking serious for the character he is. Deadpool for me, has a name between cool and sounding funny (the sound of the word itself) so im glad they are starting to change it here.
 
French dub of Star Wars:

- Darth Vader is Dark Vador (it's less of a tongue-twister I guess)
- Han Solo is Yan Solo ("Han" sounds like "Anne" which is a female name in French)
- Chewbacca/Chewie is Chiquetabbac/Chico (literal translation based on "chewing tobacco")
- C-3PO is Z-6PO (for lipsync reasons)
- R2-D2 is D2-R2 (???)
- Millennium Falcon is Millénium Condor (the literal translation for "falcon" would sound like "false cunt")
- Death Star (the first one) = Étoile Noire (which means "Black Star")
- Death Star (the second one) = Étoile de la Mort (which actually means "Death Star")
- lightsaber = sabre laser (which means "laser saber")
 
veryslowhand said:
for some reason Moana is called Vaiana here in Spain
Click to expand...
It's also called Vaiana in germany. Don't really get it.

Edit: oh just read that there were copyright issues. You cant give two movies the same name unless it's a remake and there already is a movie called Moana (which is about the porn actress, lol)
 
Darth Vader in italian was translated to Dart Fener. It was changed back to the original though after some time.
Death Star became the Black Death (Morte Nera).
C3PO became D-3BO, RD-D2 was C1-P8.
 
Oh, Masacre, forgot about that one.

Also in the latin american translations the Joker was El guasón (more or less literal translation), Catwoman was Gatubela and Bruce Wayne was Bruno Díaz or something like that. I suppose they have abandoned those translations since the last couple of decades or so, but that shit was funny back in the day.

If we are talking about Star Wars, in Spain all the names are the same, as far as I remember, but the title: it's not Star Wars, it's Galaxies War (in singular). Guerras de la estrella (or Guerras estelares, which actually doesn't sound half bad) doesn't sound very good anyway. But since the prequels they've been called Star Wars everywhere, so that was an old thing when literally everything was translated.
 
Everything that is a made up name in Harry Potter is different in French (and I'm assuming other languages too). I switched to reading the english books because they came out earlier in the middle of the series and it was really really confusing at first.
 
Talking about star wars, the spanish name is La Guerra de las Galaxias (Galaxy Wars) as it sounds better in spanish than guerra de las estrellas.

And because there was already a movie called Duro de Matar (the translation of Die Hard) they decided to translate the first movie La Jungla the Cristal (Glass Jungle) as it was pretty poetic name for the glass skyscraper the movie happend. But then came th sequels and the name was so ingrained in spanish conscience they need to get smart with what they created calling it La Jungla 2 (referring this time to the city as a jungle) or Jungla 4.0 referring to the internet lol

I actually find funny and interesting this localization changes in different countries. They give different flavours to the languages around the world.
 
The Greek dub of One Piece, though it was short lived, had a lot of hilarious name changes. It makes the English Dub look like a masterpiece.

Luffy-> Drake (Maybe someone was a fan of Francis Drake before Uncharted was cool?)
Nami->Bonney
Zoro->Black Jack
Kuro->Black Pit
Usopp->Gus
Tony Tony Chopper->Billy
Arlong->Ritchie
Miss Goldenweek-> Miss Heidi

Among many, many others. Unfortunately, it never reached Skypeia.
 
Oh, right, for some reason the movie "Captain America" was renamed to "The First Avenger" in Germany.
Star Wars was Krieg der Sterne, "War of the Stars" but they dropped that over time. More confusing was Star Trek -> Raumschiff Enterprise ("Starship Enterprise") for the first two series due to the later release of Star Trek Enterprise.
Command & Conquer's numbering counted both the Tiberian and Red Alert series so it was C&C Tiberian Dawn, C&C 2 Red Alert, C&C 3 Tiberian Sun and then went to C&C 3 to re-unite the counting with the US one...

DiipuSurotu said:
French dub of Star Wars:

- R2-D2 is D2-R2 (???)
Click to expand...

Everything is backwards in French, why are you surprised? They're members of the OTAN and UE, for example.
 
Alrus said:
Everything that is a made up name in Harry Potter is different in French (and I'm assuming other languages too). I switched to jreading the english books because they came out earlier in the middle of the series and it was really really confusing at first.
Click to expand...

Actually not in spain. The only "big" change was changing Death Eaters to Mortifagos, and even if i read the books in english I always thought death esters sounded stupid and mortifagos was a much cooler word that used latin as its base.
 
In French dubs of TV series they tend not to change character names as much as they used to anymore, but one relatively recent change I remember is Elle Bishop in "Heroes" who became Ella Bishop. This is probably because "elle" is the word for "she" in French, so it would have been very confusing to have a female character named like a female pronoun.
 
In Dragon Ball, Piccolo was translated into "Coraçãozinho de Satã", translated as "Little Heart of Satan". Don't know why.
Then Mr. Satan was a new character in DBZ, so it was named "Hercules".

Muten-Roshi was named "Tartaruga Genial", meaning "Genius Tortoise".
 
Another strange French translation was Sue Storm becoming Jane Storm. If I remember correctly, when they started translating the comic decades ago, the name Susan was thought as being too outdated in France (same with "Simone", I was very surprised when I discovered that it was still relatively common in other countries) so they changed it to Jane and it has stuck since then, even in the movies.

And Serval sounded way cooler than Wolverine, it's a shame that they had to change it. Nightcrawler being called Diablo also made me very disappointed when I realized that the game was not actually based on the X-Men.

luso said:
In Dragon Ball, Piccolo was translated into "Coraçãozinho de Satã", translated as "Little Heart of Satan". Don't know why.
Then Mr. Satan was a new character in DBZ, so it was named "Hercules".

Muten-Roshi was named "Tartaruga Genial", meaning "Genius Tortoise".
Click to expand...

Weird, the exact same thing happened in French: Satan Petit Coeur, Hercule and Tortue Géniale.
It was especially confusing as a kid since I was also reading the manga and the names were translated differently. Also, Goku is almost always referred to as Sangoku here.
 
luso said:
In Dragon Ball, Piccolo was translated into "Coraçãozinho de Satã", translated as "Little Heart of Satan". Don't know why.
Then Mr. Satan was a new character in DBZ, so it was named "Hercules".

Muten-Roshi was named "Tartaruga Genial", meaning "Genius Tortoise".
Click to expand...

Catalonia did the same for Satanas cor petit and geni tortuga. They still name him poccolo some times (they use both names).
Mr satan was kept as mr satan though.
 
Sgt. Kabukiman said:
Another strange French translation was Sue Storm becoming Jane Storm. If I remember correctly, when they started translating the comic decades ago, the name Susan was thought as being too outdated in France (same with "Simone", I was very surprised when I discovered that it was still relatively common in other countries) so they changed it to Jane and it has stuck since then, even in the movies.
Click to expand...

"Sue" is also not a known name in France at all. Plus the original pronunciation of Sue sounds like the word for "under" in French.

Sgt. Kabukiman said:
Weird, the exact same thing happened in French: Satan Petit Coeur, Hercule and Tortue Géniale.
It was especially confusing as a kid since I was also reading the manga and the names were translated differently. Also, Goku is almost always referred to as Sangoku here.
Click to expand...

The French dub of DB/DBZ was the first adaptation of the series outside of Japan. So the Portuguese and other dubs were based on the French version. If I recall correctly Satan is one of the possible correct translations for "daimao", and they changed Piccolo for whatever reason, so Piccolo-daimao -> Satan Petit-Coeur.
 
Star wars has a few good ones in brasil

"Count Dooku" = conde Dookan

Why? Because "Dooku" would mean "from the asshole" in portuguese


The planet Jakku also sounds funny because same reason, but since it dosent make as much sense as Dooku, they didnt change it

But bear in mind: every time a brasilian hears a word ended in "cu" he/she will be laughing inside

Rsrsrsrsrsrsrsrsrs
 
luso said:
In Dragon Ball, Piccolo was translated into "Coraçãozinho de Satã", translated as "Little Heart of Satan". Don't know why.
Then Mr. Satan was a new character in DBZ, so it was named "Hercules".

Muten-Roshi was named "Tartaruga Genial", meaning "Genius Tortoise".
Click to expand...

Sgt. Kabukiman said:
Weird, the exact same thing happened in French: Satan Petit Coeur, Hercule and Tortue Géniale.
It was especially confusing as a kid since I was also reading the manga and the names were translated differently. Also, Goku is almost always referred to as Sangoku here.
Click to expand...

I think this is what happened: The Portuguese dub was done using the French. It was a common practice back in the day.

Same reason our Shin Chan (originally) had Muchacho Mascarado instead of Ultrahero. It was done using the Spanish.
 
DiipuSurotu said:
French dub of Star Wars:

- Darth Vader is Dark Vador (it's less of a tongue-twister I guess)
- Han Solo is Yan Solo ("Han" sounds like "Anne" which is a female name in French)
- Chewbacca/Chewie is Chiquetabbac/Chico (literal translation based on "chewing tobacco")
- C-3PO is Z-6PO (for lipsync reasons)
- R2-D2 is D2-R2 (???)
- Millennium Falcon is Millénium Condor (the literal translation for "falcon" would sound like "false cunt")
- Death Star (the first one) = Étoile Noire (which means "Black Star")
- Death Star (the second one) = Étoile de la Mort (which actually means "Death Star")
- lightsaber = sabre laser (which means "laser saber")
Click to expand...

You've just ruined Star Wars for me! Will never hear the name the same again...
 
DiipuSurotu said:
The French dub of DB/DBZ was the first adaptation of the series outside of Japan. So the Portuguese and other dubs were based on the French version. If I recall correctly Satan is one of the possible correct translations for "daimao", and they changed Piccolo for whatever reason, so Piccolo-daimao -> Satan Petit-Coeur.
Click to expand...

Oh, that's really interesting, I had no idea.

Another interesting story was the translation of Fist of the North Star in French, completely nonsensical and riddled with hilarious puns. The actors were so horrified by what was considered a kid's show (I was watching it in the morning at age 6 or 7!) that they threatened to quit. A compromise was reached: they would only dub the show if they could say whatever the hell they wanted. The result was legendary, most of the dialogs were about secret kitchen knife techniques and drinking coffee. Anybody speaking French should look up "Ken le survivant doublage français" on youtube.
 
luso said:
In Dragon Ball, Piccolo was translated into "Coraçãozinho de Satã", translated as "Little Heart of Satan". Don't know why.
Then Mr. Satan was a new character in DBZ, so it was named "Hercules".

Muten-Roshi was named "Tartaruga Genial", meaning "Genius Tortoise".
Click to expand...

Well Piccolo was originally called Ma Jr, or Demon Jr, so that's probably where that came from
 
Sgt. Kabukiman said:
Oh, that's really interesting, I had no idea.

Another interesting story was the translation of Fist of the North Star in French, completely nonsensical and riddled with hilarious puns. The actors were so horrified by what was considered a kid's show (I was watching it in the morning at age 6 or 7!) that they threatened to quit. A compromise was reached: they would only dub the show if they could say whatever the hell they wanted. The result was legendary, most of the dialogs were about secret kitchen knife techniques and drinking coffee. Anybody speaking French should look up "Ken le survivant doublage français" on youtube.
Click to expand...

Honestly, the french version is THE best version of the anime. It's the only thing (apart from the splendid OST) that aged well due to the hilarious dub.
 
Batman used to be called Läderlappen (an old-timey term for bats) in Sweden. A literal translation of Läderlappen is The Leather Patch. Hilarious!

I think it wasn't until the early or mid-80's when we started calling him Batman.
 
I don't like it when they don't translate word-names anymore in latin american spanish. Bruno días was silly, because Bruce Wayne is a name, but not translating commom words sucks, like calling Storm, well, Storm and not Tormenta, which is the point. Same with Hawkeye, the fuck is a Jocai in Spanish? Ojo de Halcón sounds pretty fine.

The trend has been interestingly reversed in Batman's case, he's been called "El murciélago" (The Bat) and not Batman often for a while now (since TDKR, very prominently im BvS) Badass imo.
 
Pretty sure Spain has everyone beat at the ridiculous translations for names. They love giving weird names to stuff that could easily be translated.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

Fictional Universe With The Most Lore?
2
53
567
Gp1 replied
  • Poll
FCC bans foreign routers in the USA
30
668
thefool replied
I'm useless at learning a second language
47
1K
Nydius replied
Post Your Favorite Funny Show/Movie Clips
Social 
14
359
intbal replied
Merriam-Webster names slop as its 2025 word of the year
20
626
Pimpbaa replied
Top Bottom