I was watching the trailer for Cronos: The New Dawn and turned on the Spanish subtitles to better understand one part. At the end, they translated the word “traveler” as “viajera,” which specifically means a female traveler in Spanish. In English, traveler is gender-neutral, so this caught my attention since the main character’s gender isn’t known yet. It made me wonder if that subtitle was an unintentional spoiler, kind of like the reveal of Samus Aran’s identity in Metroid. I know it might just be a simple translation choice or even from an AI translator, but have you ever seen subtitles or translations accidentally reveal a big plot point in games or any other media? I’d love to hear stories about this happening—especially in gaming, but anything works!
4 Answers
In gaming, sometimes subtitles reveal mystery characters early on by naming them in dialogue, when in-game they’re meant to stay anonymous for a while. Or a line from an off-screen character is subtitled with their actual name, spoiling their identity unintentionally. So yeah, localization teams have to be really careful, but mistakes do happen and can spoil surprises.
I’ve seen this happen in different shows too. I was watching The Man in the High Castle and the trailer for the new season basically spoiled every major plot point. It was so bad I just stopped watching the trailer altogether. Apparently, marketing teams think showing the biggest moments encourages more people to keep watching, but it often ruins surprises for the fans already following the story.
Yeah, it’s annoying when trailers or subs reveal all the juicy details before you get the chance to discover them yourself.
In languages like Spanish where nouns have gender, translators often face the dilemma of picking a gendered word when the original language doesn’t specify. For “traveler,” many might default to “viajero” as a generic male form, but some go with “viajera” if there’s any hint or just as a translator’s choice. Others try gender-neutral words like “viajere,” but that can feel odd or unfamiliar to many native speakers. So sometimes these choices unintentionally hint at plot details that maybe weren’t supposed to be revealed.
That reminds me of Lunar’s remaster where they added a music player early in the game with a playlist including a track called “Magic Emperor Ghaleon.” You basically get a major boss’s full title way before his big reveal just by checking your playlist. Not exactly subtitles, but definitely an unintentional spoiler through translation/localization or game design.
Totally, but from a marketing perspective, it seems like showing everything boosts viewership, even if it spoils the experience a bit.