Worst Dub Errors/Mistranslations

[MasenkoHA]

I always wonder if Funimation was going off of the HG dub when they dub Tao Pai Pai as General Tao? He is called General Tao in both dubs.

Then they eventually renamed him Mercenary Tao at some point which better fit his status as an assassin for hire.

Probably but Toriyama gives his characters silly names on purpose. I think they should have respected that. Besides, how seriously can you take a guy that kills people with his tongue?

Mercenary Peach/General Peach still falls under a silly name.

[KBABZ]

Probably but Toriyama gives his characters silly names on purpose. I think they should have respected that. Besides, how seriously can you take a guy that kills people with his tongue?

I feel like Mercenary Tao still has that. He dresses in pink and has "KILL YOU" written on the back of his shirt. Kinda what makes him scarier, to be honest.

[MasenkoHA]

How about during the Namek arc when Bulma declares that she had know Goku since he was five years old? Where did that number even come from? There’s a whole gag about him telling her he was 14 because he didn’t know what the number 12 was!

And they already dubbed the first thirteen episodes so they presumably would have at least read the Japanese script for episode 2 when Goku tells Bulma he’s 14. And Barry Watson and Chris Neel were both involved with Dragon Ball Z and what little of Dragon Ball they had dubbed at that point so no excuse.

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

I always wonder if Funimation was going off of the HG dub when they dub Tao Pai Pai as General Tao? He is called General Tao in both dubs.

Then they eventually renamed him Mercenary Tao at some point which better fit his status as an assassin for hire.

Probably but Toriyama gives his characters silly names on purpose. I think they should have respected that. Besides, how seriously can you take a guy that kills people with his tongue?

But of course, especially with how many characters' names in the series are punny references to food.

[MasenkoHA]

IMO it has to go to Goku realizing at the 23rd TB that Kami is an alien. Second place is Daimao saying he's been "all over" the galaxy and never met anyone as strong as Goku is.

That whole portion of the Dragon Ball dub felt like Funimation was trying(badly) to fit their halfway decent attempt at being faithful (at least in spirit if not in the day to day scripts) with the Dragon Ball dub inline with their reversioning of Z pushing the “Z was sci fi Dragon Ball was fantasy !” narrative by having Piccolo talk about fighting warriors all over the universe and Kami already being aware he is an alien and Goku talking about power levels.

[Hellspawn28]

Toriyama later retcon Gero as the founding member of the Red Ribbon Army. The dub line of Gero being the leader of the RR Army almost kinda became true .

[MasenkoHA]

Toriyama later retcon Gero as the founding member of the Red Ribbon Army. The dub line of Gero being the leader of the RR Army almost kinda became true .

Between that and Dragon Ball Minus I’m starting to think Toriyama was a fan of the Funi dub.

[XanatosVanBadass]

I always wonder if Funimation was going off of the HG dub when they dub Tao Pai Pai as General Tao? He is called General Tao in both dubs.

Then they eventually renamed him Mercenary Tao at some point which better fit his status as an assassin for hire.

Probably but Toriyama gives his characters silly names on purpose. I think they should have respected that. Besides, how seriously can you take a guy that kills people with his tongue?

In fairness, I doubt Funi even picked up on the character names being puns until years later.

[sunsetshimmer]

Entire Dragon Ball GT's english dub was one big mistake. But the worst part has to be Super 17 saga.

According to english dub, Hell Fighter 17's power was "pathetic" compared to base Vegeta, while in original version Vegeta said that he powered up "beyond belief" (he compared him to DBZ 17) and that they are equal now. To make things worse, in dub they stated that Super 17 is only TWICE as strong as Hell Fighter 17. Did FUNimation really think it would make ANY sense? According to english dub, Super 17 shouldn't be stronger than Perfect Cell.

Another good example from this arc is Trunks recognizing 17 by his appearance, which already is stupid as he never saw him, but what's worse, he called him "ressurected Android 17". Did FUNimation even watch DBZ? Wasn't 17 brought back to life after Cell fight?

[Hellspawn28]

Dende needing a first aid kit in the GT dub was pretty stupid too.

[MyVisionity]

The way they made it look like Bardock was leading an army of soldiers in revolt against Freeza during the flashback scene on Namek. All like "Don't be afraid of him, men!" and "We quit, Freeza!... This is for all the people we killed!" etc.

I still remember that lame Faulconer track they had playing in the background too.

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

The way they made it look like Bardock was leading an army of soldiers in revolt against Freeza during the flashback scene on Namek. All like "Don't be afraid of him, men!" and "We quit, Freeza!... This is for all the people we killed!" etc.

I still remember that lame Faulconer track they had playing in the background too.

That one was noticable to me even as a kid, and i was like "Who are these people behind this guy that clearly aren't Saiyans?" due to not yet having seen the Bardock special at that point. Of course, when that particular episode aired dubbed in 1999 it was still a couple of years before they did the former, and thus resulting in a snippet in flashback form appearing from something that FUNi had yet to reach so they just made up dialogue. I'd figure they saw that scene of Bardock with Freeza's lackeys behind him and just assumed he was leading a rebellion when that is not at all what happened.

[ikaos]

More censorship than an error, but a couple of times Bulma and Krillin tell Dende that they'll "take him back to his family", who were just murdered in front of him. As a kid I definitely figured that they were dead so the lies always jumped out at me.

A straight up error, though, is that Raditz tells Goku that Planet Vegeta was destroyed "3 years ago", as opposed to 20, and that the line wasn't corrected in the UUE or remastered dubs, and persists to this day. Kai is the first time it's gotten right.

[Lord Beerus]

Oh, God... where to even begin...

I suppose the biggest English Dub fuck ups I remember the most vividly are:

- When Vegeta and Nappa destroy some buildings from crash landing on Earth, Vegeta says, "Too bad it's Sunday, those buildings would have been filled up tomorrow!" How Vegeta knew it was Sunday, or why the buildings would be empty on a Sunday is never addressed.

- After Nappa decides to vaporize a large portion of the city they are in, we are later told by a reporter that the entire portion of the city had somehow been evacuated before it was destroyed. Despite the fact that hundreds of people were gathered around the impact crater seconds before the attack.

- When Tenshinhan had his arm ripped out by Nappa, Tenshinhan said it would grow back. Tenshinhan can't regenerate like a Namekian can.

[MasenkoHA]

How Vegeta knew it was Sunday, or why the buildings would be empty on a Sunday is never addressed.

He was in a spaceship for almost a year is there a reason he couldn’t be getting intel on a planet he was heading to conquer?

It’s a stupid piece of unnecessary censorship but its not impossible that he would somehow know that.

[Lord Beerus]

How Vegeta knew it was Sunday, or why the buildings would be empty on a Sunday is never addressed.

He was in a spaceship for almost a year is there a reason he couldn’t be getting intel on a planet he was heading to conquer?

It’s a stupid piece of unnecessary censorship but its not impossible that he would somehow know that.

Intel from where? It took a year just for Nappa and Vegeta to reach Earth in the first place. And the fact that Earth had Dragon Balls to begin with was a major surprise to both of them.

Sorry, but I gotta bullshit on that.

[Planetnamek]

These infamous gems that Phelous mocked:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFLu4zk79OM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8Bbu7oGgcY

Also censoring Dodoria killing Dende's younger brother and the show pretending he was still alive.

As for the "sunday" thing, even if Vegeta somehow knew about the sunday tradition it's still nonsense because no buildings are completely empty on Sunday anyways.

[Dbzfan94]

These infamous gems that Phelous mocked:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFLu4zk79OM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8Bbu7oGgcY

Also censoring Dodoria killing Dende's younger brother and the show pretending he was still alive.

As for the "sunday" thing, even if Vegeta somehow knew about the sunday tradition it's still nonsense because no buildings are completely empty on Sunday anyways.

Those aren't really 'errors' just bad censorship.

[Dbzfan94]

- When Tenshinhan had his arm ripped out by Nappa, Tenshinhan said it would grow back. Tenshinhan can't regenerate like a Namekian can.

It's even funnier because Tien CAN grow two extra arms with the Four Witches technique. It's just they 100% didn't know that when they added that line.

[OWmyDragonBallz]

"The power comes from the response to a need, not a desire". Does anyone know what Goku actually said in Kai and the Japanese Z during this dub line?
This couldn't be any more untrue. If becoming a SSJ was in response to a need, Gohan and Goku for that matter would have become SSJs much earlier.
In the old dub, some are lead to believe that Gohan became a SSJ because he had to do it or else he would die.
In the original Japanese, Gohan becomes a SSJ because he's angry at himself for failing over and over again. The key to becoming a SSJ is rage and a lot of dub fans could get confused by what FUNis old dub misled them to believe.