Rose by any other name? Distributors change titles of foreign movies

Film critic Burçin S. Yalçın and Turkish Translators’ Association President Ahmet Varol say the reason for this is mainly economic. They say film distributors like to place words like “love” and “darling” in romantic comedies, thinking that the films will then sell more tickets.

For example, the film “Sweet November” was distributed in Turkey under the name “Love in November is Different.”

Tuğçe Taşkın from Tiglon Film said that if a film is about romance, the company always tries to include the world of love in its title. She says they use the same logic for thrillers and always include the word “death” in the titles of the horror films they distribute.

“We want to attract the attention of the viewer. The movie ‘An Education’ was a love film, and we distributed it under the name ‘Love Lesson’. Its direct translation would be correct, but would not mean much to the Turkish viewer,” she said.

She added that sometimes direct translations have no chance of making sense to foreign audiences, such as with the film “Wall Street.” In that case, she said, Turkish moviegoers would not know the meaning attached to the term, so they distributed the film as “Stock Exchange.”

Despite those considerations some films are distributed with translations faithful to their original names. Among those are “Minority Report,” “Kingdom of Heaven,” “Sixth Sense” and “The Lord of the Rings.”

Yalçın said sometimes they just cannot think of any other names for a movie, so it is distributed with a direct translation of its original name.

“For example, ‘Oceans 11’. We could not figure out a way to translate it, so it was distributed with its original name. Its name could still have been changed for financial reasons, but it was not. This is something that deserves respect. I support the idea that films should be distributed under their original names. But if the situation is too complex, like in the case of ‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’, then there is not much to do but to come up with a translation close to its original title,” she said.

Hakan Sonok, press and public relations director of UİP Film, said unique considerations sometimes play a role in the decision to distribute a film with a different name.

“We translated the film ‘The Lovely Bones’ as ‘Looking From My Heaven’ because the movie was based on a novel that was translated with that name in Turkish. If films are based on novels, we use the names used for the novels in Turkey for the films,” he said.

According to Varol, the names of films play an important role in drawing in audiences.

“That’s why distributors try to find an attractive name for a movie. They sometimes watch the movie in order find a new name for a movie whose title would not make much sense if directly translated into Turkish. However, sometimes translations are done by unqualified people, and they can make mistakes,” he said, noting that the issue is between the distributors and filmmakers.

“Personally, I prefer a name close to the original,” he added.