http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GratuitousForeignLanguage

— Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor (King Carlos I of Spain) "I speak Spanish to God , Italian to women, French to men, and German to my horse."

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Truth #1: Foreign languages sound more exotic. Buying some body lotion is not the same as buying La Creme Luxueuse, and driving a car is not the same as driving a Motorwagen.

Truth #2: Unfortunately, some people aren't even that good with foreign languages they have been taught, and now people can use an online translator to translate things into languages they do not even know in the slightest.

The result: random dialog, often awkward or incorrect note Considering the large number of homographs in English and its increasingly analytic nature, automatic translation can even result in complete gibberish if you translate from English into a far more synthetic language, thrown around to make a dialogue seem more exotic. It will often be heavily biased toward extremely basic words that are the most likely to be understood by monolingual readers and authors: "yes," "no," "hello," "please," "good", "sir," "ma'am," etc.

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In Japan, the most common of the languages is English. In America, Spanish and French are more likely to be used. Rarely will this result in a full Bilingual Dialogue.

Using this in a work is sometimes corrected in translations of that work. Compare Black Speech (authors feel like adding an evil language to better designate an enemy) and Did Not Do the Bloody Research (authors throw in gratuitous swearwords in a foreign language or a different dialect of English, and get their actual levels of functional vulgarity completely wrong). See also Foreign Language Title. Contrast Surprisingly Good Foreign Language. —-

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Sub-tropes:

Examples:

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Chinese

Anime & Manga

In Digimon Tamers, Terriermon's Catch Phrase is "mou man tai", Cantonese for "no problem".

In Macross Frontier, Ranka Lee sings "ni hao nyan" during one of her concerts. The writers were probably aiming for "ni hao" meaning "hello" in Mandarin, and "nyan'" being the Japanese onomatopoeia for a cat meowing (used like a Verbal Tic). The problem is that placing an adjective after "ni hao" in Mandarin also means "you're very [adjective]" — and "nyan" sounds like Chinese for "sissy" or "gay".

Asian Animation

Lamput: To keep with the episode's "martial art film" aesthetic, one of Fat Doc's lines of gibberish in "Martial Art" is accompanied by Chinese subtitles.

Fan Works

Enlai from One Piece: Parallel Works has used Chinese a few times throughout the fic.

Having spent a considerable portion of his life is Korea, Steven in Faded Blue Steven sometimes uses Korean words and honorifics.

Films — Live-Action

Live-Action TV

In the futuristic society of Firefly, the melding of societies has caused languages to become intermingled. Most prominent besides English is a "Mandarin" dialect consisting mostly of cuss words. The first episode shows signs that the writers truly intended for the characters to have a basic command of Mandarin, with one or two attempts at Bilingual Dialogue, but the actors were apparently so terrible at it that Chinese-speaking viewers had to be told what language they were supposed to be hearing. The rest of the show just uses Chinese for cussing.

One episode of House features a Chinese girl and her mom, who can speak English almost as well as Hugh Laurie can speak Chinese.

Bones: One episode revolves around a Chinese family's burial ritual. In contrast to Hugh Laurie, Emily Deschanel's Chinese is at least understandable. A season 4 episode had some rich kids trying to sass Booth in (horrible) Chinese. Booth wasn't amused.

A Touched by an Angel two-part episode focused on the persecution of Chinese Christians, but since most of the actors — despite being Chinese — were born or raised in the U.S., their accents were atrocious.

In Awkward., the Alpha Bitch leader of the so-called "Asian Mafia", Becca, often taunts Ming in Chinese.

Po from Teletubbies is Chinese and peppers her speech with Cantonese such as "fa-ti" and "mun".

Music

The song "Chong Ki Fu" from the Mexican composer of songs for children, Cri Cri, contains a few Cantonese phrases in its lyrics.

Gorillaz released a version of "Dirty Harry" in Chinese.

Theatre

The Screen-to-Stage Adaptation of Thoroughly Modern Millie has a version of "Mammy" sung in Mandarin Chinese. Oddly enough, the spoken language of the Chinese Launderers is Cantonese. Or at least, it's supposed to be, but more often than not the actors mangle the words and pronunciation beyond recognition.

Video Games

Western Animation

Czech

Fan Works

Radek Zelenka from Stargate Atlantis, who gained popularity also through his very good Czech on the show, is prone to suffering from bad automatic translations in fanfics. And thanks to his canonical propensity to swearing in Czech, fanfic writers who know no Czech can also end up having him speak in ridiculously mixed-up levels of vulgarity, dropping a fortified equivalent to an F-bomb even David Nykl himself would probably never have used on the show, right next to something along the lines of "what a dolt".

Dutch

Fan Works

Discworld fic The Black Sheep is set in the Discworld equivalent of Holland and uses not just Dutch, but also the related-but-different Afrikaans.

And then, of course, there's SOSchip, which manages to combine this trope with Surprisingly Good Dutch. When the author announced a probable Japanese dub, what then followed was a bunch of Dutch words being put into katakana and then romanji. It was hilarious. (HETTO KOFUSKIPU! MEKKU-FURANDADU!) note "'t kofschip- mech veranderd," which translates to "mech change", is the command that allows the S.S. Tex-Kofschip to transform into its many mech forms.

Live-Action TV

One episode of Friends has a lot of Dutch in it, with Ross pretending he speaks it (and failing pretty badly). The pronunciation isn't very good, though, so Dutch people might not recognize it as Dutch at first. But it does lead to some early Bilingual Bonuses, like the scene where Gunther tells Ross, "Jij hebt seks met ezels" ("You have sex with donkeys"), and the Dutch audience gets the joke — but the English-speaking studio audience doesn't get in on it until Ross looks it up in his dictionary.

Music

Jacques Brel's "Marieke" has the chorus sung mostly in Flemish ("Zonder liefde, warme liefde..."), which is kind of related to (but isn't really) Dutch and is spoken in the neighboring Flanders region of Belgium.

Finnish

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Comic Books

In Fables, the Snow Queen is called Lumi, which is Finnish for "snow". Her siblings are called Kevat, Kesa, and Syksy, respectively "Spring", "Summer" and "Autumn" (albeit missing the umlauts). Why the Snow Queen isn't called Talvi ("winter") is anybody's guess.

The Transformers comic features the Cybertronian martial art Metallikato, which is Finnish for "loss of metal (via rusting and/or deficiency)" The Finnish translation of the comic spells it "Metalicato", presumably to make it look less silly.

Films — Live-Action

At one point in Charlie's Angels (2000), the Angels avoid eavesdropping by conversing in Finnish. The girls couldn't understand what they were saying, or even that it was Finnish to begin with. The translation and pronunciation were so mangled that in Finland, the conversation still had to be subtitled in Finnish (translating from the English subtitles, no less).

In Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li, during the scene where M. Bison is, ahem, negotiating with a Cosmopolitan Council of crime bosses in Bangkok, one of the bosses (identified in the credits as "European") gets angry at his demands and declares "Perkele, tämä keskustelu päättyi tähän!", which is translated as "This conversation is over." Afterwards, the whole gathering stands up and leaves, only to get murdered by Vega.

Literature

The Star Wars Expanded Universe has random bits of gratuitous Finnish. For example, the name of the martial art Teräs Käsi means Steel Hand (the words should be conjoined in real Finnish). Juhani is misused as a female name. And the planet Taivas is Finnish for "sky" or "heaven".

is Finnish for "sky" or "heaven". His Dark Materials: In The Golden Compass, there's a reference to the Nälkäinens, which means "the hungry ones". The witch Serafina Pekkala has a distinctly Finnish last name, which is justified as she is from Lake Enara, Lyra's world's counterpart of Inarijärvi in Northern Finland. Pullman took the name from a Finnish phone directory. Serafina names Will's daemon Kirjava, which means "multi-coloured".

In J.R.R. Tolkien's The Father Christmas Letters, the North Polar Bear has two mischievous nephews named Paksu and Valkotukka, which means "Fat" and "White Hair" (but, unfortunately, using a word that only applies to human hair). NPB himself is revealed to be named Karhu, which is Finnish for "bear".

In Ninth City Burning by J. Patrick Black, "Fontanus Uusikuu" just has the right magic feeling. The "uu" is a dead giveaway in which language to look, the meaning being "new moon".

Live-Action TV

Norwegian sitcom Borettslaget features Finnish character Piirka, whose name which is Gratuitous Finnish in itself because it can't fit into the language's grammatical structure ("Pirkka" would be better). His attempts to speak Norwegian amount to speaking Swedish with a bunch of Finnish words mixed in (much of which was Finnish-sounding gibberish — his actor couldn't even speak Finnish).

Tabletop Games

Exalted has the monsters Niljake (approximately "icky/slimy thing", but could also be a family of mushrooms) and Karmeus ("horribleness").

Toys

Several Ko-Matoran have names that are actually Finnish words related to cold: Arktinen ("arctic"), Jaa (from jää, "ice"), Jaatikko (from ''jäätikkö "glacier"), Lumi ("snow"), Pakastaa ("to deep-freeze"), and Talvi ("winter").

Video Games

Hawaiian

Anime & Manga

The English dub of Ranma ½ has Principal Kuno peppering his speech with Hawaiian (in the original, he just used Gratuitous English).

Fan Works

Power Rangers: Oceania takes place in Hawaii, and many characters occasionally use Hawaiian in their daily English vocabulary. Occasionally justified by terms that do not have an English equivalent.

Films — Animation

Lilo & Stitch, set in Hawaii, has a lot of Hawaiian words and some Hawaiian Pidgin English as well (particularly Nani and David, both of whose voice actors grew up in Hawaii). In particular, the opening uses an upbeat Hawaiian chant ("He Mele No Lilo", actually melded together from two different chants and leading to a weird translation ), and "Hawaiian Roller Coaster Ride" uses Pidgin English and surfer slang. "He Mele No Lilo" in fact can't be sung in Hawaiian without putting Accent Upon The Wrong Syllable.

Video Games

Pokémon Sun and Moon takes place in the "Alola" region and has several examples: Legendary bat Pokémon Lunala is from luna, Hawaiian for "leader" (and also Latin for "moon"). One of Oricorio's forms, called hula-style in Japanese, is called Pa'u-style in English (from pa'u, "skirt"). Some human characters have Hawaiian Floral Theme Naming: Professor Kukui , Hala , Hau , Kiawe (though in Japanese his name is Kaki, the Japanese persimmon), Lana (Hawaiian for "afloat"), Mao (Hawaiian cotton, renamed "Mallow" in English), and Māmane (Hawaiian for Sophora chrysophylla , renamed "Sophocles" in English).



Hebrew

Anime and Manga

The names of several Humongous Mecha in the original Mobile Suit Gundam and a few of its innumerable sequels are in badly mangled Hebrew. Examples include the Acguy (from Haggai, a minor prophet in the Hebrew Bible), Adzam (from Ashem, "guilty"), and Elmeth (from El-maeth, meaning something like "God of Death"). What's particularly odd about this is that these are all Zeon mobile suits, a faction with an infamous fondness for Putting on the Reich.

Literature

The Ars Goetia and The Key of Solomon include random Hebrew words for their pentacles.

Live-Action TV

Frasier character Noel supposedly speaks Hebrew but doesn't always get it right. In one instance, he translates "school" as yeshiva, which is specifically for religious schools where students study Jewish law full-time. (He was probably looking for beit-sefer). He also pronounces it the Yiddish way, which no Hebrew language teacher would recommend.

Theatre

Leonard Bernstein's Mass: A Theatre Piece for Singers, Players and Dancers mostly mixes English with church Latin, but "Sanctus" is sung trilingually in Latin, English, and Hebrew. Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh Adonai ts'vaot,

M'lo chol haaretz k'vodo.

Baruch ha'ba B'shem Adonai!

Hindi

Anime & Manga

An episode of Gokujo Seitokai features a girl from India. The only word she ever says is "Namaste" ("hello"), even in inappropriate situations.

Western Animation

The Simpsons episode "Kiss Kiss Bang Bangalore" has plenty of Gratuitous Hindi. And in Bangalore specifically, the local language is not Hindi, but Kannada — but Bangalore being India's IT hub, they get enough migrants from elsewhere in India that you could probably hear Hindi too if you hung around long enough. Good thing, too, because the voice actors would probably have had an even harder time with Kannada, which sounds like this .

Hungarian

Anime & Manga

11eyes uses a lot of Hungarian, most notably in the episode subtitles and in the Opening Narration. Most of it was probably Google translated, but the opening is actually narrated by a Hungarian voice actor.

Fan Works

Hungarian shows up in the 1983: Doomsday Stories AU for Axis Powers Hetalia, in stark contrast to the similarly prevalent Gratuitous German used by Prussia and the Alpines. Especially whenever Sopron (Austria's daughter) or Angelic! Hungary shows up.

Literature

The Dragaera novels, written by Hungarian-American Steven Brust, have a fair bit of Hungarian sprinkled in. The "Fenarian" culture which predominates among Easterners (i.e. humans) is Hungarian and uses Hungarian as its ancestral language, although written phonetically rather than in correct Hungarian spelling, which is brutal to the English-speaking eye. And sometimes it's not quite accurate, as in Vlad's one-time pseudonym "Lord Maydeer", which is supposed to approximate "Magyar" (the Hungarian word for themselves), which is more accurately pronounced "Majyar".

Theatre

In Chicago, Hunyak has a few lines in Hungarian (mostly in "Cell Block Tango"); Ekaterina Chtchelkanova generally mispronounces them in the movie version. In the script of the musical, many of the vowels in those lines carry incorrect accent marks, some of which are not found in the Hungarian language.

Fictional Czech playwright Jára Cimrman parodied Gratuitous Hungarian in Vrada v salonním kupé ("Murder in the Salon Compartment"), with a Hungarian train steward whose dialogue features a few actual Hungarian words that make no sense in context — they're just there to sound Hungarian to the Czech audience. But in the play's first act (styled as a mock-academic conference), it's "explained" that Cimrman knew no Hungarian and had only two materials in Hungarian at hand when writing the play: the menu of the Hotel Petőfi, and the Hungarian railway timetable.

Video Games

In Halo: Reach, the colonist farmers you encounter in some levels speak Hungarian. Jorge, as a Reach native, acts as translator. Most of the planet's locations and both of its moons are named in Hungarian as well. Jorge even mutters a line in Hungarian as he watches large portions of Reach being blown up from orbit: "Megszakad a szivem..." ("This breaks my heart...").

Though subtitled, all voiceovers in Sine Mora are in Hungarian.

Western Animation

In Star Wars: Clone Wars, the Nelvaans speak Hungarian with a few Russian words thrown in.

Norwegian

Films — Live-Action

In The 13th Warrior, Antonio Banderas' character Ahmad Ibn Fadlan learns Norwegian by listening to men speaking (heavily accented) Norwegian around a campfire, which gradually evolves into English as he starts to learn more words. He eventually speaks up, alerting the men that he has learned their language. While they actually speak English to one another from that point onwards, they are — as far as the story is concerned — still speaking Norwegian.

Live-Action TV

The Bones episode "Mayhem on a Cross" features a couple of Norwegian police officers, who are thankfully played by Scandinavian actors who speak the language. Brennan, on the other hand, is not so lucky, as evidenced by the Running Gag where she tries to teach her co-workers how to pronounce the word skalle ("skull"), only to be even worse than everyone she was trying to teach. Norwegians found it hilariously absurd.

The pilot episode of Twin Peaks contains a visiting delegation of Norwegian businessmen. Their presence and behavior in the state of Washington is apparently an attempt at a joke — they're there to buy lumber and are very appreciative of the local nature and fresh air, none of which are in short supply in Norway.

The title of The X-Files episode "Død Kalm" is in Gratuitous Norwegian. It supposedly means "Dead Calm", and død really is Norwegian for "dead" (and also a fun word to look at) — but "kalm" isn't Norwegian at all, and reads like an English speaker forgot the Norwegian word and is trying desperately to make it up (and failing hilariously). The episode itself has many more examples of Gratuitous Norwegian in dialogue, particularly this conversation between Olafsson and the ridiculously-named Trondheim, which has achieved a certain degree of infamy among Norwegian fans.

between Olafsson and the ridiculously-named Trondheim, which has achieved a certain degree of infamy among Norwegian fans. Doctor Who at one point visits "Dårlig Ulv Stranden" in Norway, which the characters inform us that means "Bad Wolf Bay" in Norwegian. While "Dårlig" can be literally translated as "bad", it's not used in this context (it's more used for feeling sick or being of inferior quality). "Stranden" means "beach" rather than "bay". A more accurate translation might be "Slem Ulv Bukten".

Tabletop Games

Twilight: 2000 attempts to use Norwegian words, but pulls them from Viking sagas — which used Old Norse, which was spoken in Norway 900 years ago and looks like Ye Olde Butcherede Norweegioun.

Western Animation

The Steven Universe episode title "Chille Tid" is Norwegian for "Chilling Time". note Ironically, "Chille" in itself is Gratuitous English in Norwegian. An actually Norwegian version would be "Kjølnende/Frysende tid"

Portuguese

Films — Live-Action

In the 2004 version of Taxi, the German thieves who were the main bad guys in the original French film have been replaced by a criminal gang of Brazilian women led by a girl named Vanessa, played by real-life Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bündchen. Naturally, all their scenes have them speaking in Portuguese.

Music

Visual Novels

The House in Fata Morgana features most of it's original songs in Portuguese and its lyrics even foreshadow some of the future events in the story. However, at the same time, they are sung with a heavy Japanese accent and the grammar is so mangled that, even if you are a native speaker, you may not notice it's Portuguese at first.

Swahili

Comic Books

In the Swedish comic book series Bamse, the main character's daughter's first words are "hakuna matata". Only one other character understood the phrase, and it became a single motto between them. And this was before The Lion King was made (and popularized the phrase), so it was intended that no one would really know what it meant.

Fan Works

Films — Animation

The Lion King used a few Swahili phrases, most notably the motto "hakuna matata" ("there are no worries") and the opening lines to "The Circle of Life" (which everyone likes to sing but nobody can remember or pronounce). Rafiki has a line to Simba in Swahili (Wewe nugu, mimi hapana, "you are a baboon and I am not"), the sequel has a song titled "Upendi" ("love"), and the Broadway musical adds the song "He Lives in You", which also has Swahili lyrics.

Madagascar 2 has a few instances of gratuitous Swahili; for example, Gloria's newly-introduced love interest is named "Moto Moto ("hot hot").

Films — Live-Action

In the film of The A-Team, there is a memorable scene involving Swahili — the joke being that B.A.'s not the one speaking it, but rather Murdock (who's played by South African actor and Swahili speaker Sharlto Copley).

In George of the Jungle, Lyle's guides use Swahili, and Lyle tries to speak it, but ends up in a My Hovercraft Is Full of Eels situation.

Literature

The Imaro series uses numerous Swahili words as names for people and places, as it's set in an expy for ancient Africa. The word imaro itself is derived from imara, the Swahili word for "power".

Live-Action TV

In Star Trek: The Original Series, Uhura's name is an anglicized version of uhuru, the Swahili word for freedom. Uhura herself is fluent in Swahili (and a ton of other languages) and occasionally speaks it on the show.

Music

Michael Jackson's song "Liberian Girl" opens with Swahili, as sung by a South African singer. Swahili isn't spoken in either Liberia or South Africa (or anywhere particularly close).

Lionel Richie's song "All Night Long" features gratuitous Swahili mixed in with gibberish.

German group Boney M.'s song "Jambo - Hakuna Matata", although mostly in English, featured some gratuitous Swahili as well (including the famous "hakuna matata", but predating The Lion King).

Video Games

The Civilization IV's theme song "Baba Yetu" is in Swahili. It's the text of the Lord's Prayer IN SWAHILI!

Resident Evil 5, taking place in Bulungi, has a lot of gratuitous Swahili.

Western Animation

In the X-Men: Evolution episode "African Storm", kiswahili is used by the Hungan, as well as by members of the tribe he leads.

Swedish

Advertising

Ikea. Ah, the furniture chain Ikea. All their products are named after a specific Swedish word or a place name. Always creates unintended amusement for anyone fluent in Swedish. Who wouldn't love a sofa named Friheten Freedom ?

Literature

In the Trylle Trilogy, several Trylle words are actually Swedish: changeling human children are mänsklig ("human"), the village where they live is Förening ("compound" or "association"), the village where the Vittra trolls love is Ondarike ("evil empire"), and the royalty titles include Markis ("Marquis") and Marksinna ("Marchioness")..

Guy Gavriel Kay's The Fionavar Tapestry has a very important Dwarvish dagger called Lökdal — which means "onion valley" in Swedish. That's pretty hilarious, and it's unclear if it was deliberate.

Live-Action TV

In True Blood, Eric and Pam conversing frequently in Swedish. Thank heavens Alexander Skarsgård can actually speak Swedish.

In Mr. Robot, Tyrell Wellick (played by Swedish actor Martin Wallstrom) speaks to his wife in Swedish.

Video Games

Western Animation

In The Simpsons episode "Frinkenstein", Lisa spouts some gratuitous Swedish, which is based on a correct sentence (Tack för att ni förärat vår stad, "Thank you for honoring our city") but pronounced without the umlauts (which makes it sound more like a mangled "Thank you for honoring every city").

Other

Anime & Manga

Fan Works

Films — Animation

Films — Live-Action

While the film itself is a complete and utter aversion, the script of Inglourious Basterds plays the trope straight. Most of the dialogue is written in English (with instructions regarding the actual language to be used during filming, and whether the exchange is subtitled or not) but some gratuitous phrases are left in. Example (French dialogue, subtitled): Col Landa: Merci beaucoup, Monsieur Lapadite, but no wine. This being a dairy farm one would be safe in assuming you have milk?

Charlotte: Oui.

Col. Landa: Then milk is what I prefer.

In Die Another Day, a conversation takes place in what the characters say is "Icelandic", but is really German.

Queen of Outer Space has Aliens Speaking English, but they also throw in some made-up 'Venusian' words when the gorgeous space babes are ordering our heroes about at raygun point. Which means that they're speaking to Mission Control in English, yet giving orders to their prisoners in Venusian which they wouldn't understand.

Literature

Live-Action TV

Music

The Irish doom metal band Mael Mordha use gratuitous Irish (which wouldn't be gratuitous per se, except few people in Ireland can actually speak Irish). They often insert random Irish words either to create a rhyme or to evoke a folksy feel.

The title of Coldplay's Mylo Xyloto appears to be gratuitous Greek (mylo is "mill" and xyloto is "wooden" — they may have been aiming for "sawmill").

Sound Horizon is particularly fond of using foreign languages of all sorts in their albums, particularly after Aramary left.

P.D.Q. Bach's "Birthday Ode to 'Big Daddy' Bach" has one part mixing not only German and English but also Spanish and Japanese: Three times high! (High!)

Number one! (Yes!)

Three times high! (High!)

Nummer eins! (Ja!)

Three times high! (High!)

Numero uno! (Si!)

Three times high! (High!)

Ichi-ban! (Hai!)

The music video to Alison Gold's "Chinese Food" had subtitles that consisted of the song lyrics "translated" into random languages like Hebrew, Swedish, Japanese, and Italian.

The 12" of "Our Lips Are Sealed" by The Fun Boy Three includes a version in Urdu, for no particular reason.

The song "Jorobita" by the Mexican composer of songs for children, Cri Cri, has Gratuitous Arabic in its lyrics.

Pinballs

One of the tables in Star Trek Pinball is named "Qapla'", which is Klingon for "success". As expected, the game itself is filled with Klingon voice clips.

In Corvette, the player must periodically enter auto races against various sexy models, some of whom will gratuitously issue a challenge in French, German, or Italian.

Tabletop Games

Twilight: 2000 uses Gratuitous Polish, as its first scenarios are set in Poland. The result is like something out of Google translate. They also didn't include diacritics (not that they could if they wanted, because in The '80s no text editor could do that), but this occasionally changed the meaning of the word. Polish is also a highly inflected language, and the translators gave no thought to whether they were using the correct form of the word (e.g. the ship "Wisla Krolowa", aiming for "Queen of the Vistula" but meaning "Vistula the Queen").

Rocket Age is set in an alternate 1930s, where all of the major Earthling powers are spreading out across the solar system. The game designers acknowledge that their translations can be a little off and encourage Game Masters to give their players free story points for pointing out correct translations and grammar.

Video Games

Web Comics

Web Original

Inverted in Chaos Fighters, where the gratuitous local language (read:Malay) is used in an English work by a Malaysian . RAKSA cranked this Up to Eleven with gratuitous Kelantan and Terengganu accented Malay as early as the first chapter.

. RAKSA cranked this Up to Eleven with gratuitous Kelantan and Terengganu accented Malay as early as the first chapter. Ilivais X has Iriana make an elaborate speech while having an orgasm, which alternates between Vietnamese, Icelandic, French, Serbian, and Creole. None of which she actually knows, and all of which were churned out with Google Translate.

Web Videos

The Sidepork Pandemonium episode of Regular Ordinary Swedish Meal Time (which already revels in Gratuitous Swedish) show the cook karate-chopping butter in half, indicated by a Korean flag in the top right corner and subtitles in Korean.

Pitchingace88 recites the opening line of some of his commentary videos using various foreign languages such as Indonesian and Tagalog.

Mystery Science Theater F1's main language is English, but Matt has spoken Portuguese (his native tongue), French, German, Japanese, Finnish, Russian, Swedish, and Dutch at some point or another, often untranslated.

Western Animation

Adventure Time has Lady Rainicorn, who only speaks in Korean.

The Lingo Show, being an Edutainment Show designed to teach preschoolers as many languages as it can, features Gratuitous Spanish, French, German, Mandarin Chinese, Welsh, Polish, and even Gratuitous Punjabi, Urdu, and Somali.

Kaeloo: Olaf interjects random Russian words into his speech.

Real Life