I figured a megathread about modern day (2016 and beyond) western localizers doing some VERY dumb and highly unnecessary things in their translations would be a nice thing to have.

I guess we can start off with this infamous dub line from Kobayashi Dragon Maid:
post #9417077

Although this clip was from 2016, it had resurfaced about a month ago when Jamie Marchi (both the voice actress of the character and localization director) had defended her own dubbing decisons in the wake of a conversation about AI replacing localizers.

There's more to it than that but I'm too lazy to write a more fleshed out series of events + why that dub line is so bad + the stupid excuses stupid people recently used to defend lines like that.

Translators need to remember that if you put words in a character's mouth, and it proves to be controversial, it's not the translator that gets shit on for it, it's the original author.

I kinda like that they are willing to reinterpret lines for a different audience who is unfamiliar with cultural standards from the original ones. Like, if Power Rangers were exactly the same as Super Sentai Gyuranger, do you think it would have been so popular?

As far as putting political stuff in there, though, I’m not sure. It is kind of out of place. I don’t watch anime to be enlightened about causes that need support, but on the other hand, anime has historically been largely apolitical, and I like the idea of challenging that by wondering what x character would think about y issue

I am not familiar with the English dubbing, in these parts that dubbing is an attack against humanity, here in Spanish (Latin American) they never do that to put politics (at least that I remember), usually here they only reinterpret jokes or puns that would not make sense in our language, also if there is creative freedom, the dubbing actor changes the personality giving it more charisma.

Así es, en Latinoamérica no se hacen esas pendejadas.

There's a huge difference between an earnest and fair attempt at adapting lines for a certain audience........... and adding/changing lines that are obviously based on one's own personal biases, political biases, and inner turmoil.

You could say Power Rangers was a "happy accident" of sorts, a successful radical transformation that actually worked out, and you could even argue such a transformation was necessary because the original japanese footage would've been far too foreign for the American target audience.


There are plenty of anime that have political themes. Full Metal Alchemist, Attack on Titan, and Code Geass are some of the most popular and most highly rated anime of all time, and they explicitly involve politics.

If an anime character has something to say about a political issue, let it be from the original writers/mangaka and not the team responsible for translating it.

We should absolutely not have an instance of a busty ditzy babe suddenly sounding like an uptight tumblr feminist just because the translator AND voice actress responsible felt this way and wanted to insert that onto the character.

Identity and irl politics in general doesn't belong in any industry because it's mundane and trivial.

Power Rangers is a localized Super Sentai, it's the all the same thing but actors and location.

The thought of inserting modern western identity politics into anime and video games just make me cringe so much.

Just leave anime and gaming out of it.

I don’t see how FMA or Attack on Titan could actually influence someone’s views on something though. Like yeah they are very philosophical and thought-provoking, but I don’t get how they wrestle with real issues like The Boondocks did, as an example.

No sabía que only_kemonomimi era latino XD

Anyway, I would love to say in glad I do not have to watch the English dubs, but despite us not doing that bulkshit of changing the original we also suffer from their changes because many times they spread their censorship and stupid changes for everyone else, just look at Pokemon changing the music and names and forcing everyone to censor the chapter where Ash dresses as the new at the time monkey Pokemon even tho blackface is not a thing in any country that's not the USA

This is specially more prevalent in videogames, Square Enix for example to save some money hire English to Spanish translations rather than doing a Japanese to Spanish translation, meaning we have to eat up their bullshit.

You know the "Ladies and bros and non binary hoes" crap? Well it was carried over to the Spanish version "Para todas y todos, y todes también".

Because of this I can't ignore the English localization bullshit because it's a matter of time before it affects everyone else.