Keep Character Names Consistent: How to Build a Subtitle Glossary

Translation craft · 5 min read · Updated 21 October 2026

Why names and terms drift across a season of translated subtitles, and how to build a glossary that keeps every episode consistent.

Nothing makes a translated series look amateur faster than inconsistency. In episode 3 the hero's sword is "Moonfang"; in episode 8 it's "Moon Fang"; in episode 11 it's "Lunar Tusk". The Elder becomes the Grandmaster, the Grandmaster becomes the Patriarch, and a side character's name is spelled three different ways. Viewers notice, and they stop trusting the subtitles.

The fix is old and simple: a glossary, decided before you translate and applied every time. This guide explains what to put in one, how to structure it, and how to make sure it's actually used.

Why consistency breaks

Inconsistency creeps in for predictable reasons:

• Many translators. Fansub groups and studios often split a season between people.
• Long gaps. You translate episode 12 three weeks after episode 1 and don't remember what you chose.
• AI drift. Language models choose the most likely translation for each batch. Without guidance, "most likely" changes from batch to batch, especially for invented words.
• Ambiguous sources. Names written in kanji or hanzi can be romanised several valid ways.

A glossary turns each of these choices into a single, written decision.

What belongs in a glossary

Character names

Decide the spelling of every recurring name, including:

• Romanisation style - long vowels as "Ryuu", "Ryū" or "Ryu"; Chinese names in pinyin with or without tone marks.
• Name order - family name first (as in the original) or given name first.
• Nicknames and titles - what does each character call the others?

Honorifics and forms of address

Choose once whether to keep Japanese honorifics (-san, -kun, -chan, -sama, senpai, sensei), adapt them ("Mr.", "Miss", "boss"), or drop them. Mixing approaches inside one show confuses viewers. The fansub style guide discusses the trade-offs.

Techniques, powers and items

Attack names, spells, cultivation stages, weapons and artefacts. For each, decide: keep the original (Rasengan), translate it (Spiral Sphere), or use a hybrid. Fans often have strong preferences established by earlier releases - if a term already has a well-known fan translation, using it avoids complaints.

Places and organisations

Cities, schools, sects, guilds, clans and countries. These recur constantly and are easy to drift on.

Ranks and titles

Military ranks, sect hierarchies, nobility, school years. Get the hierarchy right once and it stays right.

Catchphrases and recurring lines

A character's signature line should read the same every time it appears - that repetition is part of the joke or the drama.

Structure: three types of entry

Most glossary entries fall into three kinds. Making the kind explicit avoids ambiguity:

"Keep as-is" entries stop over-eager translation of names and lore terms. "Always translate this way" entries pin down your chosen rendering.

Exact match vs. flexible match

Some terms only matter in an exact form; others appear with different endings or capitalisation. A good glossary tool lets you choose per term:

• Case-sensitive matching for names that could be ordinary words in lowercase ("Rose" the character vs. "rose" the flower).
• Flexible (fuzzy) matching for terms that appear with suffixes, plurals or small spelling variations in the source.

You also need to decide how strict each rule is. For a main character's name, the rule should be required. For a stylistic preference, preferred is enough, letting the translator deviate when the sentence needs it.

Making sure the glossary is actually used

A glossary in a spreadsheet nobody opens doesn't help. The glossary has to be part of the translation step itself.

If you translate by hand, keep it open beside the script and search it whenever a proper noun appears.

If you translate with AI, the glossary should go into every request - not just the first one. SubFly's word list does this: the terms that appear in each batch are sent with that batch as instructions, with your chosen translation and whether it's required or preferred. You can match exactly or flexibly, choose case sensitivity, and mark terms as "keep as-is". Because it's applied automatically, episode 12 uses the same names as episode 1 without anyone having to remember.

After translating, search the output for the old or wrong variants ("Moon Fang", "Grandmaster") and fix stragglers with find and replace across the file.

Character details that aren't names

Some consistency problems aren't about vocabulary at all. In many languages, verbs, adjectives and pronouns change with the speaker's gender - Hindi "main thak gaya" vs. "main thak gayi", for example. If a translator doesn't know a character's gender, they'll guess, and guesses vary from scene to scene. Recording each recurring character's gender alongside your glossary removes that guesswork; SubFly lets you set it per character so the translator applies it automatically.

Keep the glossary alive

A glossary is never finished. Each time a reviewer fixes something that will recur - a new technique, a minor character who becomes important, a better translation of a rank - add it immediately. Over a season, the glossary becomes the most valuable file in the project: it's what lets a new translator join halfway through and sound like everyone else.

Starter checklist

1. List every recurring character, with spelling, name order and gender.
2. Decide the honorific policy.
3. Add techniques, items, places, organisations and ranks.
4. Mark each entry "keep as-is" or "always translate as".
5. Choose exact or flexible matching and required or preferred strength.
6. Apply it to every translation batch, and update it after every review.

For the full translation workflow, see the complete guide to translating anime subtitles. Word lists come with SubFly's higher plans - see Pricing for what each plan includes.