For example: there’s a mistranslation from the scene from CoD that Makarov mentions: “Remember - no Russian” but instead was rewritten as「殺せ、ロシア人だ」(they basically rewrote the entire line as “Kill 'em, those Ruskis” which defeats the impact from the original, like WTF does that have to do with anything. The 日本語 “translation” is shit).
Even in languages similar to English (like Spanish, French or German): can translated dialog either from dubbing or subtitles still suck when you know what the original one said? The thing is, there are cultural nuances and slang to take into account (and lip sync when speaking about dubbed versions, as each language has different animations).
Castlevania: “Get a silk bag from the graveyard duck to live longer”.
Some people are still searching for that graveyard duck.
What was the proper wording?
IIRC, it’s mentioned in the manual that some NPCs lie to you. So if that’s true, it’s not so much a mistranslation as it is an NPC wasting your time.
I don’t know of a game, but I do know of a movie on Netflix. It was about the first World War, on the German side (forgot the name). They translated “kampf” as camp, so the subtitles said “we must go to the camp!” while in German they said “we must go to battle!” (kampf means struggle, battle).
All Quiet on the Western Front? I think I remember catching that error in that movie
I stopped playing games in German for that exact reason, at least initially. I didn’t even care about lip sync initially (that was more a thing with movies).
By now, it has become a matter of habit, with very few exceptions that are originally German-made and have reasonable texts (like the X series of space sims or the older Anno titles). For a time, I also held on to games I’d played in German initially because I couldn’t bring myself to trade away nostalgia (like Skyrim, which I eventually switched to English for mods).
By now, I wonder how many translations might be shoddy AI slop without any native or at least deeply immersed editor to look it over.
What little contact I do have these days is because my wife tends to play in German and I occasionally catch a translation. I’ll have to check the game she’s currently playing again to look for examples, but I recall shaking my head a few times.
All you base are belong to us.
An original meme.
Fuck. I played this as a kid. I’m old.
Final Fantasy VII has the classic mistranslation right at the start when Cloud says “Barret, be careful! Attack while its tail is up! It’s gonna counterattack with its laser!” when the complete opposite is true and it should have been translated more as “Watch the tail! You don’t want to be hit by that laser!” (i.e. DON’T attack while the tail is up).
The game has been rereleased so many times, I wonder if they ever fixed that? Just fit in a “don’t” in there
Basically all of Pathologic. The best one is when the player calls someone an “onion”.
Not in dialog, but something I noticed in the Dead Space remake. In the engineering section of the Ishimura there’s an area called the machine shop, says so over the door on a display, in the French translation it says poste d’achat, which translates back to shopping/buying point, seems like someone only translated the shop part.
Oooh my favorite localization minigame “Missing context or bad machine translation ?” (It’s usually both)
You spoony bard!
Not off the top of my head, but you can look them up here: https://engrish.com/category/video-games/
In Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons Of Liberty:
Otacon: I’ve been trying to pinpoint the receiving location, but I haven’t had much luck. There’s a heavy duty firewall in the way. I’ll try some more, though.
In the german subtitles, heavy duty firewall is literally translated, e.g. „schwere Brandmauer“ 😁
I don’t know if it counts, but in a Dead Island subquest you help a russian survivor, and at the end he thanks you with “Spasibo, my friend”, but in the dialogue is pronounced ‘spásibo’ instead of the correct way ‘spasìba’.
