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Foreign-Looking Font

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Because reading Arabic is tricky.

If a movie or cartoon is set in a particular period or region, the creator may want to show certain details to the audience through a sign in the background. However, if most of the audience is educated in the English language, it is not practical to use an actual foreign language. So in order to avoid breaking the feel of the setting, the scene will just have English text written with a typeface emulating the writing style of that region or period.

This can also occur on the covers of books or on movie posters in order to evoke the feel of the work's setting.

Compare Translation Punctuation and The Backwards Я. See Translation Convention for the spoken version. This is the visual equivalent of Just a Stupid Accent, and commonly results in a Font Anachronism. If the font is so weird that you can't make out what the letters are meant to be, it's Wingdinglish.

Bear in mind that, because of their associations with works that either stereotyped or demonized ethnic groups, this trope carries some Unfortunate Implications. Use caution when using this trope.

Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Anime & Manga 
  • The English-language cover art for Excel♡Saga, both anime and manga, uses a Japanese-styled font for the title. Bonus points for using actual katakana characters turned Latin characters.
  • The kanji in Black Butler's title are written in the style of Old English blackletter calligraphy, reflecting the show's Victorian English setting. No, really.◊
  • During Pokémon the Series: Ruby and Sapphire saga, the producers used a faux-Japanese text on signs, letters, etc., to make it more "acceptable" for a global audience. It appeared earlier in the series too. It doesn't even try to look Japanese a lot of the time, it looks like mixed-up symbols.
  • One scene in One Piece has a close-up of Luffy's first bounty poster. Oddly, in a world that speaks English, has English signs, and English words right on the bounty poster, the Fine Print is nothing but a random assortment of letters and characters.
  • Typesetting, one of the major tasks in creating anime fansubs, involves finding or in some cases creating fonts to match onscreen Japanese text, which are then placed over or near the original text.

    Comic Books 
  • DC Comics is fond of its use of "Interlac", a universal language of the future which naturally just looks like the Latin alphabet redone in some "spacey font".
  • Used extensively in Asterix, not only for writing but also in the Speech Bubbles of characters speaking foreign languages. Egyptians speak in hieroglyphics, Normans in the suitably Scandanavian-styled alphabet (with å and ø for a and o), Greeks uses the proto-Greek angular font, the Goths in blackletter, the Amerindians in pictographs, and Romans tend to get into Trajan-esque capitals when getting eloquent (with V replacing U). Attempts by characters to speak another language are often shown as written in the appropriate font, but jumbled-up or ragged. This was often used when a character spoke in a language those around him didn't understand, but the words were written in the language of the reader.
    • Asterix the Legionary features an Egyptian named Ptenisnet, who speaks in hieroglyphs and must have an interpreter in order for the reader anyone to understand him. (His name is a drawing of a tennis net.) He is interpreted by a polyglot clerk who speaks all fonts languages.
    • Also occurs (obviously) in Asterix and Cleopatra, but mainly with secondary characters.
    • Similarly, symbols denoting curse words also change appearance based on the language the character speaks.
  • Various letterers use interesting fonts to represent people who have an accent or are speaking an alien language.
  • In Blue Beetle, the Scarab-speak letters correspond to English, but they're almost entirely illegible. However, when the Scarab gets Character Development, the letters change into more readable English while still invoking the previous version.
  • The French cover (but not the English cover) of Tintin: Land of Black Gold has the words "L'or Noir" written in pseudo-Arabic calligraphy. The Arabic writing underneath is a correct translation of the title (though it wasn't in the first edition; this particular book was revised many, many times).
  • In The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, most non-English speech is actually rendered in the original language. In the case of the Martians, their language is depicted using heavily-distorted mirror writing.
  • 2000 AD commonly uses vaguely Cyrillic-looking letters when Nikolai Dante is on the cover.
  • The Mighty Thor writers like to give his dialogue a calligraphic font.
  • Gotlib:
    • Inverted in "Superdupont vs. Bruce Lee" cartoon by Gotlib. Superdupont uses the usual comic Symbol Swearing, peppered with some Chinese-looking symbols. Bruce Lee retorts with the same swearing symbols — only the Chinese add-ons are replaced with ABCDEF.
    • Same author, "Nô Japonais". The gag is played straight (to hell and back, that is) ending with stepdancing little green men.
  • The title of Animesque comic Deity is rendered on the cover in a font based on Japanese katakana — to the point that it takes a moment to realize you're actually looking at English.
  • Used to a great extent in Fables. The occasional Backwards R makes something instantly Russian.
  • Wonder Woman (1942): In the Golden Age occasionally Imperial Japanese correspondence would be intercepted, the "writing" on said correspondence would always be nonsense crossed straight and angled lines.
  • The Cartoon History of the Universe: In the end of the first volume and the title page for the volume on early Indian history, the title is written in a pseudo-Devanagari font.

    Comic Strips 
  • Adolf Kilroy, a tortoise who turned up from time to time in The Perishers, not only had Hitler's face but also spoke in Fraktur.
  • Pogo offers a variation based on job rather than country: showman P.T. Bridgeport speaks in circus-poster fonts, clergyman Deacon Muskrat in churchy medieval script.

    Films — Animation 
  • Aladdin: Crazy Hakim's Discount Fertilizer is written in Arabic brushstrokes on a sign near a cart of manure near the end of the "One Jump" chase scene. The title itself and the opening credits also appear in Foreign-Looking Font. No real Arabic appears in the movie at all, with the possible exception of a sign over Jafar's door; it's either English in a foreign-looking font or random scribbles that look like what Arabic looks like to people who don't speak Arabic.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Around the World in 80 Days (2004) has this with all the map fonts throughout (eg, Hindi-style script for the Chyrons in India, etc.).
  • The Death of Stalin misappropriates Cyrillic letters resembling Latin ones to make Soviet propaganda posters and official documents intelligible to an Anglophone audience. The effect is to remind the audience that the events takes place in the USSR and to highlight the farcical absurdity of the real events depicted; it coincides nicely with the fact that the British and American actors don't even bother with the accent.
  • The Lord of the Rings has both: Although lots of texts appear 'properly' written in J. R. R. Tolkien's constructed scripts for Middle-earth, various instances of text are rendered as English in Latin letters for the convenience of the viewer, but made to look vaguely likenote  the scripts they are supposed to be. Most notable is probably the Tengwar-imitating font (an originally Elven script, but universally used), even down to the tehtar diacritics, which in proper Tengwar are vowel signs and here are added to the corresponding vowel letters.
  • Pokémon Detective Pikachu uses a font that resembles Japanese characters in its logo, opening credits, and various in-movie text.
  • Quantum of Solace used exotic fonts to label each country the story takes place in. Maddox criticized this use of the trope in his review of it, saying that its use crossed the line into pretentious and implies that Viewers Are Morons.
  • Street Fighter takes place in the vaguely Southeast Asian country of Shadaloo, where all signs are written in English with pseudo-Thai characters.

    Literature 
  • Several Fu Manchu book covers (and movie and television posters) often feature English words written in Asian brushstrokes.
  • Terry Pratchett's Discworld:
    • In Jingo, dialogue in Klatchian is written in an Arabic font. When they're speaking Morporkian with a Klatchian accent, the H is usually in the Arabic font (in the one case of someone speaking Klatchian with a Morporkian accent, every letter except H is in the Klatchian pseudo-Arabic font). If you actually know anything about Arabic, this is a bit of a Bilingual Bonus, because there are three Arabic letters that can be transliterated as H, and they all sound different.
      • Lampshaded by 71-Hour Achmed, who is posing as a sort of 'joke' Klatchian for reasons of his own. His "H'I go, h'I come back' phrase is based on a character in the once-popular 1940s BBC radio series ITMA.
    • In Feet of Clay, the Golems write in an archaic font, to invoke their background in Judaic myth. In Making Money, an older Golem language uses the Eochian alphabet created/discovered by Doctor John Dee, astrologer to Queen Elizabeth I. According to "The Annotated Pratchett File" entry for the former:
      The font used by the golems in the UK editions is clearly designed to look like Hebrew lettering. For some reason, the font used in the American editions is not.
    • Überwaldian is shown with a blackletter font. Except where it is meant to be the Discworld analogue of Russian, where a Cyrillic font is used.
  • The Thursday Next series features an ancient prophet who speaks "Old English"... that is, his dialogue is written in Old English font. One character can understand him (as well as the reader, of course), but the rest really do behave as though he were speaking an ancient dialect.
    • And then there's the native language of the Book World, which is Courier Bold.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Justified in Doctor Who, as the TARDIS automatically translates languages, both spoken and written, into the language the companion speaks. This is most apparent in the revived BBC Wales series.
    • In "The End of the World", the phrase "Have a Nice Day" is seen on the Doctor's parking/valet ticket for the TARDIS, in an extremely stylised 'futurefont', echoed in various other writings seen in that episode.
    • In "The Fires of Pompeii", all writing is rendered in a font reminiscent of the Roman Empire.
    • In "Turn Left", the signs at the end of the episode are in English but in a Chinese-looking font.
  • Unusually for Power Rangers, the titles for Power Rangers Jungle Fury use a stylized, heavily angled brushstroke font as a nod to the Japanese origin of the fight footage.

    Music 
  • Acting Lovers (the German Eurodance group a la E-Rotic) uses Domo Aregato (a wonton font by Dieter Schumacher/Fontmaker) for their logo.
  • Eurobeat label Hi-NRG Attack's Eurobeat Anthems album has its title written in mock katakana script.
  • Type O Negative's Dead Again album cover uses Mock Cyrillic.
  • The Chemical Brothers' logo uses an Arabic-styled font.
  • The phenomenon of the Heävy Mëtal Ümlaut is born of the sentiment that Fraktur is not Teutonic enough by itself. (It could instead be that Fraktur is all-but-unreadable to anyone not very familiar with it ... there are numerous letters that are nearly indistinguishable if you're not aware of the conventions. Adding an Umlaut to Blackletter, which is not the same as Fraktur but looks similar, conveys the "Teutonicness" with the added bonus that people born aoutside Germany, or even inside Germany but after say 1940, can read it.)
  • The cover text of Nothing but Noise's Not Bleeding Red is written in an Aurebesh-style script.
  • The title of Exodus by Bob Marley is styled to resemble the Ethiopian language Amharic.

    Pinballs 
  • All of the signs and indicators in the Chinatown portion of Lights... Camera... Action! are lettered with the same psuedo-Asian typeface used in many Chinese restaurants.
  • Inder's Bushido features a few Chinese characters and a lot of weird fonts. "Extra Ball" is written under the flippers in a variation of the common Chinese restaurant font, but other writings on the playfield use a more angular font with A's styled to look like torii gates, and the less said about the title font the better.

    Video Games 
  • A video game of The Hunt for Red October featured English text in an imitation Cyrillic font.
  • Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 had recently joined the faux-Cyrillic bandwagon, given the nature and setting of the game.
  • 688: Attack Sub similarly used a fake-Cyrillic font (all Rs are reversed, Es are 3s, etc) when playing a mission from the Soviet side, but thankfully provided a key combination to reset text to the standard font.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess uses what at first appears to be Fictionary, but is in fact a very stylised English. This is notable because most other games use a cipher with a completely different alphabet instead.
  • Phantasy Star Online also uses its own signature font for English. It's a bit easier to read than the Zelda example.
  • Skies of Arcadia is yet another example of a game that uses a 'foreign' language (Arcadian), which is simply English with an unusual font.
  • The title card for the DanceDanceRevolution song "I Feel" uses mock Thai/Lao letters.
  • In Quake II, all the Strogg text is in stylized English, while in Quake IV, it's in Wingdinglish.
  • Raw Thrills' movie tie-in arcade racer The Fast and the Furious: DRIFT (Tokyo got forgotten, apparently) takes this to a ridiculous level. The menus are outright padded with it, and every sign and billboard has at least some.
  • Shows up all over the place in Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy XIII. The languages of their planets are basically English, except the alphabets are written with all sorts of crazy serifs and squiggles attached. The final boss of the latter even has the lyrics to his Image Song written on his body.
  • Total War: Shogun 2 does this for the logo.
  • Hearts of Iron 3 uses this on the political map: neutral countries have their names in a 'typewritten' font, the Allies are sans-serif, the Comintern uses faux Cyrillic and the Axis (even Japan and its Chinese puppets) use Fraktur. If a nation joins a faction it changes fonts accordingly.
  • First Samurai uses a pseudo-Japanese font on the title screen. The sequel Second Samurai uses it for practically all in-game text.
  • RanaRama displays text in Runic-looking letters.
  • The title of Game Arts' PC-88 game Harakiri is written in vaguely Sino-Japanese-looking romaji. Considering that the game purports to be based on the work of a fictitious Orientalist and was only released in Japan, it's likely intended to parody this trope.
  • The arcade version of Shadow Dancer uses a hiragana-style font.
  • The Big Red Adventure, the sequel to the adventure game Nippon Safes Inc., is set in post-Communist Russia and all the text is written in a pseudo-Cyrillic font. The title also makes use of The Backwards Я. Interestingly, at the end of the game the words "The End?" turn from that faux Cyrillic script to a faux Arabic one, to imply that the next adventure would be set in some Middle Eastern country. However, the company folded and a sequel was never made.
  • Titus the Fox was originally called Les Aventures de Moktar, starring an "Arabian" character (actually a character played by a French comedian); as such, its "Game Over" and "The End" messages were written in an elaborate pseudo-Arabic font.

    Web Comics 

    Western Animation 

    Real Life 
  • Carol Twombly's Lithos typeface is based on Greek letters, though it's versatile enough to be used for an African or Native American feel.
  • Look hard enough and you'll find fonts in fake Hebrew, fake Arabic, fake Japanese, fake Greek...
    • The free font site Dafont.com is full of them, as are myriad other free font sites.
    • A fake Korean font exists.
    • A fake Hindi font exists in which the letters are just written curvier and have a line on top.
  • The absolute king of this trope is Papyrus. It's generically foreign looking enough that it can stand in for nearly anything, from Greek, to Middle Eastern to Chinese. Papyrus is overused to the point where there's a blog dedicated to looking for it.
    • A lot of its usage probably comes from the one-two punch of it being both a foreign-looking and ancient-looking font.
    • Its overuse is such that the font-fetishising graphic design community can be roughly split into "people who hate Papyrus" and "Browncoats".
    • Trajan started off similarly as a Roman-looking font, but thanks to overuse in movie posters and titles over time it morphed from "Roman Epic" to "epic movie" to "basically every movie". So now it's just the generic movie font.
  • The logo for Delirium Tremens beer uses a fake Thai font.
  • The "Soy Vay" kosher marinade company uses a Hebrew-based font for its titles. It would make more sense than for Kikkoman to do it!
  • The Backwards Я may give a good impression of Russianness, but for a double whammy, combine it with a font like Rodchenko or Pravda to get over-the-top hammy Sovietness. If you want Ye Olde Russiane instead, consider using the Old Church Slavonic script (Latin versions of it can be found online, such as this one).
  • The Nazis' infamous yellow star badges had the word "Jude" (or a local word for "Jew") printed on them in Hebrew-flavored Latin characters similar to Soy Vay's. This is most apparent on some Dutch "Jood" badges, which use the real Hebrew character mem sofit in place of Os.
  • The various forms of Chinese Restaurant Font, collectively called the "Wonton Font" by The Other Wiki. A Roman font meant to be reminiscent of the strokes of Chinese characters, which graces every Asian restaurant in the universe outside Asia itself. There's even specifically a font called "Chinese Takeaway," ostensibly used for this purpose.
    • This sort of stroke style appropriation has an Asian equivalent in what one might call "fake Western serifs". The covers of some well-known English-language classics that are translated into Japanese, such as works by James Joyce, sometimes feature Japanese characters with Western-style serifs clearly intended to give them a European look. Here's an example of one such font, for the curious.
  • Justified in that establishing and keeping a mood or theme is incredibly important—rule of thumb, if it's important enough to dress up the scene, it's important enough to dress up the font.
    • This is pretty much what the sub-group of Graphic Designers known as Typographers do for a living.
  • Use of (uppercase!) sigma for "E" makes something instantly Greek. But sigma's a consonant (S, specifically)! Eta's a vowel. Too bad it looks like an H...
    • Similarly, the substitution of V for U makes something instantly Latin. Never mind those J's, K's, and W's, none of which the Romans had.
      • The Romans did use K, but it wasn't used often (Kalendae is the example the Other Wiki gives.)
      • The letters Y and Z were technically part of the Romans' alphabet, but were exceedingly rare and only earnestly used in a few loanwords they took from the Greeks.
    • The subreddit GRΣΣK (r/grssk) gathers instances of the gibberish-via-Greek-letters variety. Did you know Beyoncé did a movie called "Ethmscthming"? Things get really hairy when Ancient Grome comes into play.
  • Somewhere along the line, using completely linear, angular letters (such as a lozenge for "O") became "American Indian font". Most likely because summer camps do this, and these summer camps often have totem poles.
    • The same gimmick can be used for "Viking" fonts because it makes the letters resemble Norse or Germanic runes.
  • The German blog HanziSmatter has identified the "gibberish Asian font" that tattoo studios use to “translate” English names into what they claim is Chinese.
  • When Those Wacky Nazis created an art exhibition to brainwash their people into believing that all Jews were not only Greedy Jews, but also dishonest, disloyal and murderous Dirty Communists, the advertising for their exhibition bore writing that looks like Hebrew script◊ but reads "Der ewige Jude" (German for "The eternal Jew").
  • More benignly, the government of the Republic of Ireland was fond of using fonts based on Celtic letterforms for official Irish Gaelic signage and logos, which was largely phased out in the '60s and '70s. Compare the 1924 Posts and Telegraphs monogram◊ with its late '60s replacement◊.
  • The Other Wiki calls these fonts "ethnic typefaces" and has a small section dedicated to them in its general article on typefaces.

 
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Video Example(s):

Power Rangers Jungle Fury

The titles used an East Asian-looking font to nod to the show's Japanese source material.

Example of:
Super Team

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Power Rangers Jungle Fury

The titles used an East Asian-looking font to nod to the show's Japanese source material.

How well does it match the trope?

5 (4 votes)

Example of:

Main / SuperTeam

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