So I often wonder about japanes cultural things in anime and especially since I watch dubbed (increasingly bad eyesight has made subbed a non starter). Anyway there is a love is ware episode that revolves around a character finding the word wiener funny but it sorta makes me wonder because in english we have that but I would assume other languages would not have the same stuff. At one point too a character is trying to get another to say it by asking another name for hotdogs or for dashhounds. It just makes me wonder if there are real analogues in japanese around this or do the writers have to decide on a different cultural thing for the joke to be around. Anyone know about this? On a side note there is the whole thing of people calling them by their last names and it makes me think about everyone walking around referring to each other like they are a student in their gym class. I wonder how prevalent using the last name actually is.
This is called localization.
Information or brevity will always be lost in translation (and communication in general), so the translator needs to pick what information to convey and how to convey it. Sometimes it can be difficult to find a satisfactory localized translation, like translating a pun. Or if the translation has been localizing the Japanese name-honorifics system as whatever the characters in an English speaking country would call each other, but then there is a long dialogue in the show discussing how they are addressing each other; that dialogue can throw a wrench in the translation.
For Love is War, the source joke word was probably ちんちん (chinchin) which is both a childish way to say “penis” (like “poopoo” is a childish way to say 💩, or like “peepee”) and a dog trick where the dog sits and begs (it might also have additional meanings). The translator probably had to think about how to make a similar gag with the existing visuals.
Oh thank you. This scratches my itch of curiosity. That totally fits as the whole thing started with a character showing dog tricks and it sounded a bit wierd in english but I took their meaning to be about the treats she was giving the dog. Makes me think that tranlators have to act like a writing room to determine how to change it. This really makes me wonder about simulcasts. I assume they must get the script and such to translate/rewrite before the japanese audio is even done.