cf. the Eddie Izzard bit about Speed / La vitesse.
In France, “Look Who’s Talking” was called “Allô maman, ici bébé”
I guess the pun doesn’t translate very well.
It’s total speculation, but I’m guessing that “A Couch in Tunis” would introduce more confusion among many potential American viewers than “Arab Blues” would.
I’ll bet the goal of the movie marketing people is to title movies with titles that are both catchy and that convey something of the movie in a minimum number of words. And they want to try and avoid negative connotations as much as they can- I feel like “A Couch in Tunis” screams pretentious artsy-fartsy French cinema, not just a drama set elsewhere, and that sort of thing only appeals to a very small segment of the US movie-going population.
By comparison, “Arab Blues” gets across that it’s set in the Arab world, or at least has Arab characters, and has something to do with the blues or something like that. It gets across the salient things without telegraphing that it’s potentially a French art-house movie (and if it’s not, then that just proves my point even more; I’ve assumed it is from the Wikipedia blurb and the title).
Right. The book name change came first- apparently there was some worry about the title in the US, and “Sorcerer’s Stone” was JK Rowling’s suggested title for the US… if they had to change it at all.
The movie just followed the literary example in both countries- it wouldn’t have made a lot of sense IMO, to have left the movie as “Philosopher’s Stone” in the US, when the book was already titled “Sorcerer’s Stone”.
Sometimes, the foreign title just cuts to the chase. For instance, Coming to America was released as, I kid you not, Eddy Murphy, Prinz von Zamunda (Eddy Murphy, Prince of Zamunda).
Here are some foreign movie titles, along with the titles American distributors slapped on Italian horror films:
https://www.reddit.com/r/horror/comments/8cf256/horror_movie_titles_mangled_in_translation_into/
Here are some non-horror films. I’m not sure these are all for real
And more:
On the other hand, when writer/director Maurizo Nichetti’s comedy Ladri di saponette was released in the US as The Icicle Thief, the Wiki article – at least the English Wiki – uses the latter.
The film’s Italian title Ladri di saponette, a play on the Italian title of De Sica’s film, means “Soap Thieves”; it is justified by dialogue where a boy is told not to use up all the soap when washing his hands, and his mother wonders if he is eating it. For English-speaking audiences, the title was changed to The Icicle Thief, playing on the English title of De Sica’s film. This title was justified by changing the wording of the English subtitles when the characters talk about some chandeliers and one is stolen. In the original Italian dialogue they are said to sparkle like pearls (pèrle) and drops of water (gocce), but in the English subtitles, they look “like icicles” (which in Italian would be ghiaccioli).
Lots of Agatha Christie’s books had their titles changed when they were released in America. Lord Edgware Dies became Thirteen at Dinner. 4:50 from Paddington became What Mrs. MacGillicuddy Saw!. Death in the Clouds became Death in the Air.
Even Murder on the Orient Express was originally published in the U.S. as Murder in the Calais Coach, although that title change has been largely forgotten.
Not surprisingly, wikipedia has a list of works with different U.K. and U.S. tiles, including movies, TV shows, games, and books. There’s a lot of them.
That’s why I can’t get too upset about Harry Potter’s title being changed. Far from being some kind of horrible affront, it’s something that happens all the time.
Several of Wim Wenders’ films were retitled for overseas distribution. Wings of Desire’s original German title, Der Himmel über Berlin, means “The Heaven/Sky over Berlin.” Kings of the Road was originally Im Lauf der Zeit (“In The Course of Time”). Some were closer to a literal meaning: The Wrong Move was originally Falsche Bewegung (“False Movement” so no real difference).
Whereas Graham Greene’s Stomboul Train was published in the U.S. as Orient Express.
I remember years ago seeing a DVD of “The Hangover” in France. Instead of a French title, though, it had the English-language title, “A Very Bad Trip.”
The Man Who Wasn’t There was likewise released in France as The Barber. (Not “Le barbier,” but “The Barber.”)
At least the German examples are valid. And two films mentioned in those articles also had rather strange German titles:
Annie Hall - Der Stadtneurotiker (The city neurotic)
Once Upon A Time In The West - Spiel mir das Lied vom Tod (Play the song of death to me)
“Jaws” was just “Der weiße Hai” (the white shark). “Kiefer” wouldn’t have worked, because it’s ambiguous and means both “jaws” and “pine tree”, so people could have been thinking it was a film about a forest.
Or an idiom: Dog Day Afternoon was rendered in some Spanish language markets as “Tarde de Perros” (as in an afternoon fit for dogs) since in many of our lands we have no “Dog Days” idiom.
A manga/anime example is Dungeon Meshi. The Japanese title (which uses the English word “dungeon”) means something like “dungeon meals” and is about a party of cash-strapped adventurers who save money by eating the monsters they kill instead of bringing along supplies. The English title is Delicious in Dungeon, which is a very clumsy way of making it “D&D”. The Spanish title, though, is Tragones y Mazmorras, which means something like “gluttons and dungeons” and is only one letter off from the Spanish name for D&D, Dragones y Mazmorras. That one’s brilliant.
Surely it could have been called Dining in Dungeon. Or Dungeons and Dining (unless that would be too close for Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro).
Back in the 50s, the musical Damn Yankees was changed when it was released in the UK to What Lola Wants, since the US title was too rude and jingoistic.
Leslie Halliwell’s The Filmgoers Companion has many of these.
For instance (US to UK)
The Fortune Cookie → Meet Whiplash Willie
The Whole Town’s Talking → Passport to Fame
Teenage Caveman → Out of the Darkness
(UK to US)
Young and Innocent → The Girl was Young
Sabotage → A Woman Alone
The Quatermass Experiment → The Creeping Unknown (Same for the other Quatermass films).
Tomorrow We Live → At Dawn We Die
Whiskey Galore → Tight Little Island
Cry the Beloved Country → African Fury
Many of these had their original titles restored.
From what I understand, in Brazil “Teen Wolf” was renamed “The Boy From The Future” in order to capitalize on the INSANE popularity of Back To The Future in Brazil, and to “justify” it they renamed the main character to “Marty” and inserted a line implying this was the same Marty as BTTF.
Well, you gotta admit, the people on that island were pretty tight. 
Jingoistic? They didn’t realize “Yankees” refers to the baseball team?