Airplane! was released as Flying High in Australia and New Zealand. Supposedly this was intended to avoid confusion with one of the Airport films, which would have been in the theaters at the same time.
The Concorde… Airport '79 was released a year later overseas as Airport '80: The Concorde, around the same time Airplane! was released.
Oliver Stone’s Nixon was released in China with the title Big Liar.
Finally, truth in advertising.
Not strictly in point, but when the Alan Bennet play The Madness of George III was filmed, it was retitled The Madness of King George. A popular rumour at the time held that this was to avoid cinemagoers thinking it was part of a series and skipping it because they had missed The Madness of George and The Madness of George II. Regrettably, there is no truth in this. The retitling was done with an eye to the US market, where the historical personage concerned is mainly known as King George rather than as George III.
According to QI The Sound of Music was known in Italian as “Tutti Insieme Appassionatamente”, or All Together Passionately.
And, it’s worth watching that clip, believe me …
Which is ironic, or possibly appropriate, because Airplane! was supposed to be an indirect parody of Airport.
In fact it takes its plot from the thriller Zero Hour! Presumably that’s also where it got its exclamation point. Zero Hour! itself is based on a CBC movie starring James Doohan(!!!).
One of the funniest scenes in Airplane! is (almost) unchanged from Zero Hour!
In some cases it would make no sense to just literally translate the title in the original language to another language. Sometimes the title in the original language involves a pun that doesn’t work in any other language. Consider the 2008 movie called Made of Honor (or Made of Honour in some English-speaking countries). This is a pun in English between the words maid and made that can’t be literally translated into any other language. So it was translated in various ways in other languages. Would someone like to tell us the literal meaning in those languages of as many of the translations as you know?:
Note that you have to click on the words “45 more” below the section Also Known As (AKA) to see all the various translations.
German: Verliebt in die Braut=In Love With The Bride
French: Le témoin amoureux=The Witness In Love
I know, that’s why I said it was an indirect parody, as directly it’s a parody of Zero Hour. By the way, I still call iit Flying High! sometimes. Old habits etc.
So what might be a plausible marketing reason for changing the title of movie in my OP, rather than just translating it? Is there maybe an assumption that native English speakers generally don’t even know where Tunis is?
Mel Brooks’s “History of the World: Part I” was called “La folle histoire du monde” (The crazy history of the world) in French. Subsequently, “Spaceballs” was called “La folle histoire de l’espace” (The crazy history of space).
Forrest J. Ackerman, in his magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland, had a semi-regular feature that showed the titles of foreign versions of American and English films (trabslated into English). Often these had nothing to do with the original film, and sometimes didn’t even make sense. Apparently a lot of the time they change the title to try to bring more people in. So sometimes they’ll add a “Frankenstein” to a movie title for a film that has nothing to do with Frankenstein or his monster.
So, yeah, they do this to other films.
And, of course, the American film distributors play the same game. So the 1976 French comedy Un éléphant ça trompe énormément , in English literally An Elephant Can Be Extremely Deceptive was retitled Pardon mon Affaire for US distribution
The French antiwar comedy La Victoire en chantant had its title changed to Black and White in Color for the English speaking market. The original title was a lyric from a French patriotic song unknown outside of France.
After it won the Oscar, it was rereleased in France as *Noirs et Blancs en couleur *, a direct translation of the English title, but also a pun on the French Blacks and Whites angry (“en colour” vs. “en colère”)
Maybe in some cases, but many times it’s a (not unreasonable) fear that the movie or book will fail to find its audience, and therefore flop, because of its title (that it would be misleading or confusing or turn people off).
Would you have “gotten it”? Remember, this was the first Harry Potter book, released when no one knew who or what “Harry Potter” was. If you’d never heard of the Philosopher’s Stone before (and I don’t know about the UK, but I’m sure very few US kids would have), you’d think a book with the word “Sorcerer’s” in the title would be a fantasy about magic but a book with the word “Philosopher’s” in the title would be… a book about philosophy? esoteric deep thoughts? Would kids have lined up to buy a book about a philosopher?
It looks like they weren’t wrong to change it, since the book did turn out to be a massive success. Although…
In Sweden, The Producers was released under the title Det våras för Hitler, or “Springtime for Hitler” (the title of the musical-within-the-film). They went on to release every subsequent Mel Brooks film with the same title format: Springtime for the Sheriff, Springtime for Frankenstein, etc….
Spaceballs was apparently called that because it was a parody of films set in space and was a screwball comedy. There was no literal translation into any other language. Any translation would have to make some entirely different reference to being about space and being a comedy.
The philosopher’s stone is no better known in the U.K. than in the U.S. This was purely the decision of the American publisher. They made no survey of children about the title. Rowling was so happy about the amount of money they offered her that she decided to accept it.
In Germany it was called…Spaceballs. They sometimes keep the English title, especially when there is no direct translation.