American movie foreign language moments in the native country?

[StarHeart333 1,764]

If you are confused by the title of my question allow me to elaborate in the description here.

Now, we all know that when Hollywood in the US makes a movie the language will be in the English since that is the majority language of America and of course as said gets distributed into countries which speak a non English language said movie will get dubbed and ot subbed into that country's language so they can watch it as well.

This brings up a good question of what happens in American movies when in the movie there is a foreign language that is key to film plot scene, character background etc when that film is shown in that specific country itself?

Let me give two quick examples so you have a better idea.

In John Carpenter's movie "The Thing"  during the Intro scene a Norwegian pilot attempts to warn the American group about Dog-thing.

The key point is that the American's CANNOT understand the Norwegian language being spoken. So, how does this scene work in Norway or any other country with Norwegian as the primary language? 

Another good example is the movie Timeline where in a group of present day Americans travel back in time to England and French 100 year war.

One of Americans sent back is a man named Francois who is there to help interpret and translate the French language for the rest of his group.

However, the group gets captured by English soldiers and when the English lord hears Francois' French accent he decides to cutely toy with him by asking him to translate the following French sentence: "je suis un espion" into English.

"je suis un espion' literally translates into "I am a spy' in English.

In other words, the minute Francois translates it he gets killed for admitting to being a spy.

So, yeah again how does this movie work in France?

So yes how do such scenes with an element of foreign language work in the country where the foreign language is actually the native language?

 

 

Edited April 20 by Samuel L Changeling

[Kyoshi Frost Wolf 41,452]

I've certainly seen the word "American" more than enough for one day. 

From what I've seen, they just treat it normally, as if nothing was changed, assumingly for consistency sake within the story. 

Edited April 20 by Kyoshi Frost Wolf

[Kosmodakrigan 43]

Usually it's either that the "foreign" language from the scene in question is changed or the content of the dialogue is changed.

I haven't watched The Thing but I would assume if the context allows for it, the nationality of the Norwegian pilot would just be changed to something else. It's common if it's important a character is a foreigner and the story is translated in his country, his nationality is changed. For example, the German kid Uter from the Simpsons is Swiss in the German dub and in the Korean release of Big Hero 6, (for political reasons) the protagonist Hiro Hamada was renamed Hero Armada and all explicit indications of him being half-Japanese were removed.

A common example for dialogue change, most Europeans languages have an informal and formal "you". If a characters says use the informal or asks if they can, it won't work this way in English. It has to be rephrased, like "call me by my first name" or "we're not so formal here". Sometimes the content is entirely changed and not about forms of address. Or it's just cut out.

Edited April 28 by Kosmodakrigan

[Dreambiscuit 9,691]

Subtitles would serve the same as spoken English in any venue worldwide, even when there are mixed languages. But as far as dubbed versions I can only imagine a degree of alteration might be needed on the part of the translators in order to clarify the scene to foreigners. I’ve seen movies with a short description along with the subtitles that clarify a plot point, so I imagine the same could be done with dubs, either by adding explanatory subs, or by altering the dialog according to need.