In French, it was Les Dents de la Mer (“The Teeth of the Sea”), which has a certain elegance to it.
(Hey, EinsteinsHund, thanks for digging this up; I had a major case of the lazies today and just couldn’t get around to it.) 
People in the UK didn’t follow US baseball at the time (1955). I doubt it was mentioned in the press very often.
So, what did they think the movie was about? I wouldn’t be surprised if it was not terribly successful.
Damn Yankees was originally a musical on the stage. It was popular in both the U.S. and the U.K. As far as I can tell, the movie was also popular in the U.K. too.
The English translation of Proust’s “A la recherche de temps perdu” was originally called “Remembrance of Things Past”. My wife, who loves the book thinks that is a much better title than the original, although it is now titled “In Search of Lost Time”.
I’ve heard the guy who coined that phrase wasn’t half bad at writing.
The Latin American title is I Want to Steal the Bride. In Spain it’s called My Bride’s Wedding. The Brazilian title is The Bride’s Best (male) Friend.
The title refers to one of the songs, which was a hit at the time.
The original play is a Broadway classic.
But it’s not uncommon for the title of the film not make sense until you see it.
So you think that nobody there would have known what baseball was? You think that they would have said, “What kind of sport is that? Is it something like cricket or rugby or badminton or tennis? Or that weird sort of football they play there? Or is it a variation of that other B-Ball game they play there? What’s it called - bagball or something?”. The fact that baseball wasn’t played much in the U.K. didn’t mean that they wouldn’t have recognized it from news stories and movies from the U.S.
The downside is that it sounds identical to Les Dents de la Mère (“The Teeth of the Mother”), which make it seem like a wacky comedy.
On the other hand, the literal Les Mâchoires is just silly.
No, I’d have thought lots of people would have understood it, but I thought @RealityChuck was saying that lots wouldn’t. I didn’t live there then (was barely alived when the movie came out), so I don’t know. Maybe I misinterpretted him.
Not to mention the fact that they had a couple million Americans as guests during the Great War and Great War 2: Atomic Boogaloo. Doubtful the GIs got up games of cricket during their downtimes.
True, but few in the UK followed the sport or the teams. Most in the UK wouldn’t get the reference.
In the other direction, A movie called The Ashes at Lord’s would be incomprehensible to an America audience.
Of course not. We would look at it, and immediately say, " oh, it’s Rounders. "
Yes, they would.
No, it wouldn’t.
Maybe for some people on the Dope, but not 90% of Americans. How many Americans follow that sport? Do the results ever appear in the local sports reports? Without looking it up, who won the last time?
As for the UK knowing it, maybe today, when MLB games have been played there, but how many would have 60 years ago?
I don’t comprehend it.
Is Lord’s the place that Ford and Arthur appeared at with a Chesterfield sofa? If so, that’s the only reason that I would know about it.
The James Bond movie License Revoked was retitled License to Kill, allegedly because American audiences wouldn’t know what “revoked” means.
The Germans retitled Star Trek and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea as Raumschiff Enterprise and Mission Seaview, I guess because that pretty much covers everything on the shows.
The awful Russian version of Married … with Children was Happy Together, Open All Hours was The 24/7 Pharmacy, and Star Trek was The Starry Journey. (Oddly enough, it was listed in the Russian TV schedule for New York as The Starry Sector or some such, but this was long before it was shown on TV in Russia.)
However, 'Allo, 'Allo remained 'Allo, 'Allo.
John Wayne’s Stagecoach became The Journey Will Be Dangerous in Russian.
License to Kill is such a better title though, since it’s an actual line in the Bond films and thus if you saw License To Kill on a theater front you’d instantly know it was a Bond film or at least a spy action film. License Revoked sounds like a teen car comedy.