When it comes to horror, there are some cases where the less the viewer knows about something, the scarier it is, and when you think about things that most people are unfamiliar with, foreign language is up there as a pretty tricky thing to grasp. So, get yourself a scary-looking language that says... whatever, slap it in your horror work, and you're bound to make some people shiver.
This is a primarily Horror trope in which a foreign language is used in some fashion in order to unnerve viewers who more often than not do not understand or speak it in any way. This can show up anywhere, from sudden pop-ups, to ominous notes. Any language could be used for this (even English, in some parts of the world), but some of the most common are Arabic, Hebrew, and Japanese.
There are a few reasons why the usage of this trope can scare viewers. For one, most viewers aren't that experienced with speaking or reading foreign languages, especially for complicated ones like the above examples. Without that knowledge, such foreign dialogue could mean anything to less knowledgeable viewers, and with the right context and setting, can lead to an unsettling feeling. A less than savory explanation could be due to negative associations with such languages.
More often than not, what the translation actually says doesn't matter; its mere presence should be enough to unnerve you. Because of this, it's common for the creators to not exactly care about what the text actually means. If the text actually does have meaning when translated, it can go either way, mainly via less than stellar machine translating. In some cases, though, the translation can actually enhance the horror. It will also have a tendency to be subverted, parodied, Played for Laughs, and/or lampshaded by having the text actually translate to something that's funny, meaningless, and/or self-referential (as shown in the page image).
For international works, this can sometimes be completely unintentional, turning something unassuming in its native language to something that could catch the viewer off guard. This is most commonly found in video games, where certain, usually secret or unused events are left untranslated, usually as an oversight.
Truth in Television: Surprisingly Good English would unnerve most Japanese people even today.
Note that this trope only covers real languages that are used to scare the viewer. For fictional languages, see Black Speech.
Sub-Trope of Language Barrier. Compare Ominous Latin Chanting, Reality Has No Subtitles, and Gratuitous Foreign Language, though this doesn't apply in all cases. Compare and contrast Everything Sounds Sexier in French and Fun with Foreign Languages.
Examples:
- Suicide Mouse mentions that the last frame of the lost episode had Russian text translating to "the sights of hell bring its viewers back in". The fic doesn't give the actual text, so the various fanmade recreations of the episode have all tried to translate it themselves, to varying degrees of success.
- In-Universe in Big. The Spanish man shouting behind the door during Josh's first night in his hotel room is what ultimately brings him to tears.
- Captain Phillips: The Somali pirates use their native language often, most notably when they first begin infiltrating the MV Maersk Alabama. Combined with their violent nature, and it comes off as a very threatening first impression.
- Parodied in The Dictator with the New York Helicopter tour scene with the characters speaking "Wadiyan" (actually Hebrew with a heavy Arabic accent), laughing at talking about driving and crashing a Porche 911, but only saying "nine eleven" in English amid the foreign words, freaking out the American couple also on the helicopter tour.
- Satan's Slaves 2: Communion: Raminom speaks in Balinese, which is technically not a foreign language in Indonesia, but definitely alien in the predominantly Malay-speaking Jakarta and adds up to the terror the protagonists experience.
"Sayaga bakti ring sangsane jakimbas." note
- The Sixth Sense: Malcolm listens to a tape of his talk with Vincent (who had previously told him that he sees the dead), and a man is heard saying this Survival Mantra: "Please, I don't want to die, Lord; save me, save me" in Spanish. This turns out to be the voice of one of the dead people Vincent had heard. In the credits, this same audio clip plays again.
- United 93: Ziad yells "Allahu akbar!" as he puts the plane into a steep dive.
- In-Universe in The Labours of Hercules: Harold Waring, a monolingual English young man in an Eastern European hotel is unnerved by the presence of two ugly elderly Polish women who don't speak English, especially when the polyglot Mrs. Rice reveals they're demanding more money to avoid revealing Waring's role in the accidental death of Mrs. Rice's son-in-law Philip. This leads to him asking Poirot for advice and getting the shock of his life when he learns Mrs. Rice and her daughter are a pair of con women using his ignorance of the language to extort even more money from him after faking Philip's death and even existence (the Polish women were making perfectly innocent conversation, but to Harold, it sounded like Black Speech). The story ends with Harold declaring he's going to start learning more languages.
- Parodied in Parks and Recreation when the local Wamapoke Indian chief Ken Hotate places a fake curse, and later lifts it, on the town of Pawnee, but is actually making fun of the townsfolk in his native language but using a ceremonial sounding tone of voice.
- The Psych episode "Lassie Jerky" ends with the main characters under attack from a trio of Serbian assassins there to shut them up about finding a site that the organization they belong to has been dumping the dead bodies of their victims. As the fight goes on, due to the episode's Found Footage style, none of what the Serbians are saying is translated, which adds to the terror of the situation.
- The Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "The Ship" has a subplot about Enrique Muniz slowly dying of blood loss. When he starts speaking Spanish instead of English, it's a sign that he's become delirious.
- In the Star Trek: Enterprise episode "Observer Effect", Trip and Hoshi catch a serious disease. Hoshi starts babbling in various languages, including Russian, which is portrayed as a sign that she isn't all there.
- "Die Eier von Satan" by tool is an angry spoken-word tirade in German, set against a roaring crowd and a harsh industrial beat. Played for Laughs as a Bilingual Bonus — the lyrics are a cookie recipe.
- HIStory: Past, Present, and Future -- Book I: "Stranger in Moscow", a slow, moody ballad with a lot of Soviet-era imagery, ends with a man whispering menacingly in Russian over the end. Chills right up the spine. Allegedly this is a KGB agent interrogating us. The liner notes for Blood on the Dance Floor: HIStory in the Mix give a translation: "Why have you come from the West? Confess! To steal the great achievements of the people, the accomplishments of the workers..."
- HELLMET: The Prototype APU boss speaks entirely in his native Dominian. Fireteam 6 can't comprehend what he's saying, but they quickly realize which language it is, revealing that rather than the insurgents and rebels they've been fighting until now, they're fighting trained, well-equipped military personnel, who shouldn't even be here.
- Hit Single: fakebaby ends with a scene depicting a television switching on in front of a crib, revealing a red background as white Japanese text fades into it. No More Innocence himself quickly flashes behind the text before the scene cuts to black.
- Iji: Butt-Monkey villain Asha's Leitmotif is actually a distorted English rant about beer.
- Kingdom Come: Deliverance: Cumans from Sigismund's army are using Hungarian language without translating it to show them as terrific invaders and raiders.
- Randy Learns Science: One screen with an exploding Randy has creepy Arabic text… that says "This text will look scary if you can't read Arabic."
- Shipwrecked 64: A portion of the game's soundtrack makes use of heavily distorted radio samples from around the world, making non-English samples inevitable. One of the more notable songs is "1996
", the chase theme for surprise boss Blot Bunny, which prominently has a softly-sung passage in German. The samples were chosen at random, so the source, the meaning of the lyrics, and even the specific language they were sung in due to the distortion, were unknown even to the developer until the fandom later identified the source as the last refrain of "S'Muaterl".
- Sonic.exe: The ending screen of the game depicts an ominous image of X, with red Japanese text at the center. Averted in later versions of the game, with the text being translated into English in front of a blood-red background.
- Sonic the Hedgehog CD: The infamous "Fun is Infinite" screen depicts a screen full of uncanny Sonics, with Japanese text in the very front. To add fuel to the fire, it was rumored that the 'Majin' signature at the bottom right corner of the image was signed by the devil, though this has been debunked. An accidental case, as the screen was meant to give off a more humorous vibe thanks to the funkier boss music in the JP/EU versions, rather than the threatening song that the US got.
- There's a story variously reposted across social media that a Muslim man on a flight saw the American passengers praying in thanks after a safe landing saw no reason not to do so himself. Unfortunately, "God is great!" being pronounced "Allah Akbar!" in Arabic, he was promptly Mistaken for Terrorist.
- Mario Party DS Anti Piracy makes use of this in the music for the infamous "Piracy is No Party!" screen. Near the end of the song, a Japanese woman's voice can be heard. Given how the rest of the song has no lyrics and how suddenly it pops up, it can catch you off-guard on the first listen.
- Super Mario 64 Beta Archive: Developer Crash Handler starts with the simple, peaceful main menu of Super Mario 64, before suddenly cutting to an ominous crash handler, with untranslated Japanese text. The picture of Mario shrouded in darkness and the foreboding music does not help matters.
- Miraculous Ladybug: In the Shanghai special, Marinette is lost in Shanghai and doesn't speak Mandarin, she's in a panicked state because someone stole her Miraculous, and she and her new friend Fei keep getting chased by a trio of boys who keep shouting at her in Mandarin. Since she doesn't speak the language, she assumes they're threatening her. In reality, they are trying to warn her that Fei is a thief who preys on foreign tourists and that she's the one who robbed Marinette in the first place.
- The Simpsons: "Lost Our Lisa" sees Lisa get on the wrong bus trying to find a museum with an exhibit that's closing soon. She finds herself in Little Russia, where she asks a local man for directions. She runs away in fright when he seems to yell violently at her, but the subtitles reveal that he's politely answering her question.
