To no one’s surprise, the vast majority of highly acclaimed movies are produced in Hollywood. Roughly 87% of movies released by major U.S. studios are produced through American Hollywood systems (Follows, 2025). And because of that we, viewers, are used to the original English titles of movies without thinking how dubbing studios deal with translation of said titles. The art of translating movie titles can sometimes be more challenging and elaborate than dubbing the entire 2-hour long film. Translators and voice actors have to preserve a delicate balance of translating precisely while preserving the meaning, puns and word plays hidden in movie titles.
Russian-speaking audiences all around the post-Soviet world, for instance, are quite passionate about dissecting the difference between original-English movie titles and their Russian adaptations. While some examples are criticized for complete disregard of the movie plot, others are highly praised for their wittiness.
One of the movie title adaptations that I find particularly accurate is the “Hungover”. In Russian translation, dubbing studio that was working on translating the movie decided to name it “Мальчишник в Вегасе” or “Boys trip in Vegas”. Despite a total 180 from its original title, “Boys trip in Vegas” sounds ultimately more appealing and comedy-esque than a “hungover” and works better at representing the main event of the film as a whole.
In many non-English-speaking countries, English words or phrases are used in marketing simply because they sound modern or stylish to local audiences – even if the original English movie gets renamed to a different English title that was never used in the U.S. or UK (such as The Hangover becoming Very Bad Trip in France). (Bayles, 2016)
A similar adaptation choice was made for the movie “Untouchables” – the dubbing studio in charge of translating the iconic film decided to move away from the use of language entirely and titled it “1+1”.
Albeit, some movie adaptations go down the questionable path of changing up the title without necessarily conveying the plot or adding a pun. When “Avengers: Winter Soldier” was released in the Russian-speaking market its title was changed to “Avengers: the other war”. Weird choice? Perhaps. But that’s the art of translating movie titles.
