Translation with an Agenda

Traduttore, Traditore. ("Thou translator, thou traitor.")

—Saying among translators

Translators are professional people who would never put their political ideology, religion or other such opinions above their job, and would never violate the text in order to advance their own views.

Well, most of them anyways.

This trope is about the exceptions. Translators or editors that would, yes, and do, yes, ignore or twist the original meaning of a word or text in order to advance their point of view. Serious translators consider this an utterly unprofessional and even evil breach of ethics and of the reader's trust. Unprofessional ones, however, couldn't care less, and the result is a Translation with an Agenda.

These are translations that gleefully ignore or twist the original text in order to pursue a political agenda either of the translator or of the editor/employer of the translator. Whereas a Tactful Translation is meant to smoothen the edges of a situation, a Woolseyism is essentially a distilled translation and a Cut and Paste Translation tends to have cultural or logistical reasons, a Translation with an Agenda is done solely to advance a political, religious or otherwise ideological goal - twisting or ignoring the original work by falsely identifying villains in it with one's political opponents, mistranslating a "good" adjective as something more specific related to one's agenda, or even by simply mistranslating most or all of the text to make it a tract on one's views. Note that this isn't a mere mistake or simple unconscious bias - there is actual, conscious intent to make the translation fit one's views regardless of what is said in the original text.

Needless to say, fans, translators and translator fans who realize what's going on get quite furious, with good reason.

Examples of Translation with an Agenda include:

In-Universe Examples

• One episode of Torchwood: Miracle Day cites a fictional Vietnam-era translator -- "Harry Bosco" -- by name as a synonym for Translation with an Agenda. Figuring out what was actually said before the translation was slanted is a major plot point of that episode.
• In Knights Of The Old Republic 2, the HK-50 droids masquerade as protocol droids (who among other things work as translators) to spread anarchy and war by ruining diplomatic confrontations. Judging by some of the cut content (where you see the place they're manufactured and trained), they are not at all subtle about it, often opening conversations with vile insults and overt threats they attribute to their "masters".
• In the Christopher Stasheff book A Wizard in Chaos, a boss's steward is deliberately mistranslating prices quoted by merchants and taking the excess. This lands him in trouble when the protagonist, a Telepath, shows up.
• Mad Magazine ran a series of Newspaper Comic strips which had been (allegedly) adapted by the Soviet Union, re-translated into English, which had the various characters bemoaning their fates or otherwise delivering very unsubtle stabs at the American Way. For example, in a Peanuts Halloween strip which showed the kids going Trick or Treating, the speeches were changed to the kids having to go begging door to door to get something to eat and being so embarrassed by having to do so that they dress in costumes so nobody will see their shame.
• The final The Critic webisode showed an alternate ending to Pearl Harbor for the Japanese market.

Real Life Examples

• This case is a textbook one. "Nasty", a general insult, was translated as a specific political slur regarding people of a certain Brazilian political party. Since the editor of this comic is linked to a magazine well-known in Brazil for utterly hating said political party, and since it would take specific effort to make such a "mistake" (as "nasty" is a fairly simple word that can be translated more easily into several others), it became clear that this was a Translation with an Agenda.
• While the book has never been translated fully, at least some of the controversy regarding The Satanic Verses in the Arabic speaking world can be attributed to the fact that the title was sometimes deliberately translated using the word "ayat", which specifically means the verses of the Quran as opposed to its more general English title.
• This very NSFW page of the hentai title "What is Islamic Fundamentalism?" (Yes.) has the original Japanese dialogue replaced with "SMUT SMUT SMUT" all over. Trans. note: "stuff about dripping and dicks and stuff". Ed. note: "use your imagination". You could imagine someone has become tired of the stock hentai dialogue...
• In his Let's Play of Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, after having railed against Yoshio Sakomoto for Other M in earlier videos of the LP, Slowbeef translated his producers log as thus:

Hello, this is Yoshio Sakomoto! It’s not easy writing stories for Metroid considering my functional illiteracy. Honestly, I don’t really like Samus, and I don’t want you to like her either. I hate her and feel threatened by her. I will ruin this franchise. I’m just coming out and telling you. Fuck Metroid and fuck you.

• There's an infamous scanlation of Cardcaptor Sakura where Tomoyo's Love Confession to Sakura is unchanged, but presented with a note on the side that reads "Ewww..." It's uncertain if this was in reaction to the lesbianism or to the fact that they're cousins, but fans were not amused.
  • In all fairness, there is a case that the fact that both of the pair are notably underarge might be a factor.
• In an inversion, many Chinese films will have lines altered when exported to the US to remove any pro-Chinese political messages. With some films, this not only means taking out overt references, but anything that can be construed as even vaguely political. Suffice to say, has become a Berserk Button for fans.
• The Franco Regime had a board of censors to make sure Spaniards weren't exposed to foreign filth and dangerous political ideas. This extended to movie dubbing, and some efforts of the censors are still legendary in Spain, the most egregious one being turning the protagonists of the adulterous affair in Mogambo to an innocent-looking brother and sister, making their visually hinted relationship incestuous instead in a spectacular backfire. Another straightforwardly political one was omitting Rick's past as a fighter for the Spanish Republic in Casablanca.
• Progressive/Social Justice activist crowd played gatekeepers by attaching itself to translating companies and harassing those that don't bow to them. Eventually, some localizers (Treehouse is particularly infamous) got so bad that they attracted serious backlash.
  • Dead or Alive Extreme 3 Beach Episode attracted enough of nuisance that developers announced «We do not bring DOAX3 to the west and won't have any plan change in the future. Thank you for asking.» Then Play-Asia announced that «#DOAX3 will not be coming to the US due to #SJW nonsense. However, we will have the English Asia version[3] available». This move evidently worked great.
  • Nintendo had problems with translations from Treehouse decreasing in quality and increasing in volume of censorship and "adaptations" (it's hard to tell which part covers "Tetris harassment" thing, but it's not good either way). Same crowd was up in arms when Nintendo fired one of them for PR disaster. Nintendo of America was a part of problem, as it allowed such things to happen more than once. Gamergate crowd began "#TorrentialDownpour" — addressed Nintendo over their heads. As the article here says —

If I hire a translator, I expect that person to translate what I say. I don’t expect him to make something up. I have to trust that person. If I learn that what I said was not translated correctly, would I re-hire that person? Of course not. There are real-world implications and consequences. Why should video games be any different? If the video game industry is supposed to be an adult, grown-up industry, why does it accept less of something so important that is basic in the real world?

• • • In a surprising twist, Nintendo eventually fed up with lost sales and announced that it's not something that should be their business.

Real Life Examples in The Bible

Some translations of the Bible are considered by some people to have an agenda. This not only makes this trope Older Than Print, it also earns the Bible a section of its own!

• The Septuagint is a translation of the Old Testament from Hebrew into Greek, which was completed in 132 BC. Overall, the Septuagint agrees with the Dead Sea Scrolls more than the Masoretic Text does, but some renderings aren't quite exact. For instance, each instance of YHWH (God's personal name) was replaced with kyrios (Greek for "lord"), and a Hebrew word meaning "young woman" was translated as a Greek word meaning "virgin". A couple cases of bias in Bible translation can be traced to the Septuagint:
  • Some Jewish people accused Christians of reinterpreting parts of the Old Testament to sound like prophecies applicable to Jesus. Of particular note is the line "A young woman shall conceive and bear a son" (Isaiah 7:14) where "young woman" was translated as "virgin". The Hebrew word could have either meaning, but Jews contend that the "virgin" translation is out of context.
  • The New World Translation, produced by Jehovah's Witnesses, changes many instances of kyrios in the New Testament to "Jehovah", especially where the New Testament quotes the Septuagint.
• Conservapedia's "Conservative Bible Project", where they try re-translating the King James Bible from English to English. They feel there's too much Liberal bias in the translation made in the 1600s.
• The line translated in the King James Version as "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live". Though many modern translations of Exodus 22:18 use "sorceress", an equally valid translation would be "poisoner".
  • There was no real distinction between the use of malign magic and poison in the culture at the time. Both made people fall dead with no visible reason. In any case, "witch" in the context means "a person who uses magic/poison to harm others", rather than "person who uses magic, period".
  • The difference between "poisoner" and "witch" is that women were more likely to be accused (and executed) for witchcraft than men. "Poisoner" is a far more gender-neutral word today, and in the 1600s it would more commonly be applied to men, as far more men had any knowledge on how to use poisons. With the change of a word, the translator changes the focus of suspicion from primarily men to women.
• Speaking of English translations of the Bible, the Geneva Bible was infamously biased in favor of the type of Calvinism embraced by the vast majority of Puritans. This fact, plus the fact that the other, state-sanctioned translation was of less than satisfactory quality, helped pave the way for the King James Version in the first place.
• A New Testament example is the common practice of translating the Greek word doulos as "servant" when it meant "slave". The New Testament has a lot of casual and uncritical references to slaves, but slavery is nowadays considered abhorrent. At the time it was fairly matter-of-fact, though to be fair one of Christianity's main selling points was its insistence that slaves were as equal as anyone else in the eyes of God, and (in the context of their status, anyway) should be treated as such.
• The Temperance Bible altered every instance of Jesus drinking wine to drinking grape juice.
• The ending salutation in Romans 16 references Junia, a female deacon or church leader. Nearly all English Bibles (minus the more scholarly ones, like NRSV) render this name as "Junias" in an attempt to make it masculine and disguise the fact that many early church leaders were women.