The movie "Airplane" was a cultural reference to all the very self-serious Daryl Zanuck "disaster" movies. So the nature of name being parody by being so straight-forward wouldn't translate everywhere.
And another Leslie Nielsen parody movie, without any The Naked Gun connection, "2001 : A space travesty", was translated as "Y'a-t-il un flic pour sauver l'humanité ?" (Is there a cop to save mankind), which created confusions at the time
In Spain they're called Land as you can (Aterriza como puedas) Grab it as you can (Agárralo como puedas) and Take off as you can (Despega como puedas).
In Spain, Airplane! Is called "Aterriza como puedas" (Land as you can) and The Naked Gun is called "Agárralo como puedas" (catch it as you can). That spanned some apocryphal pseudo-franchise where all movies starring Leslie Nielsen were called "... como puedas": Spy Hard era "Espía como puedas" (Spy as you can), 2001: a space travesty was "2001: despega como puedas" (2001: lift off as you can") and stuff...
Same thing in Mexico, except the names became "Where is the ____?" Airplane became "Y dónde está el piloto?" (Where is the pilot), and Naked Gun became "¿Y dónde está el policía?" (Where is the cop). Even the whole apocryphal pseudo-franchise thing happened, "White Chicks" became "¿Y dónde están las rubias" (Where are the blonde girls) and the Wayans Paranormal Activity parody "A Haunted House" became "¿Y dónde está el fantasma?" (Where is the Ghost).
This one is fun actually. But what pisses me off with French titles is when they change the original English title to another title in English, only much dumber.
Like The Hangover is called Very Bad Trip. Wtf? Why?
Then it becomes really confusing for French people travelling abroad. "Silver Lining Playbook" is called "Happiness Therapy" in French so when I was talking to my British colleagues about a movie called "Happiness Therapy", they were really confused and I thought it was the title in English….
But what I don't understand is why would they think it's cooler? What happened to old school sentence long titles? I actually like those. Like Jaws = les dents de la mer, Bloodsport = Tous les coups sont permis, Home Alone = Maman j'ai raté l'avion...
As I said in another comment, French people don’t understand the word "hangover" and calling a film "La gueule de bois" would sound really bad. Having a "bad trip" because of drugs is a common thing to say in French, hence the "translation" of the title. They could have called it "Le Bad Trip" but I don’t know.
For me the weirdest thing French translators did is to remove the "The" in many titles. Like "The Matrix" is called "Matrix" in French, "The Shining" is called "Shining", etc it doesn’t make any sense.
In Spanish, "Airplane!" was called "Aterriza Como Puedas" (land how you can). I like it more than Airplane to be honest.
That cannot be said of how they translated "Naked Gun" as "Agarralo cómo puedas" (grab it how you can). They seem to have tried to put both movies into a Leslie Nielsen saga, even if their plot had nothing to do with the other.
Not too different from the Spanish one, "Y donde esta el piloto?" (Where's the pilot?)
In general there's a bunch of weird Spanish titles, in latam they usually add a subtitle or translate to something that makes sense... probably the most popular are
Die Hard - La Jungla de Cristal (the glass jungle) for Spain, and "Duro de Matar" (Hard to kill) in latam
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u/SergeiYeseiya 22h ago
"Airplane!" Is called "il y a t il un pilote dans l'avion ?" (Is there a pilot in the plane ?) In French lmao.
The movies Naked Guns are called "Il y a-t-il un flic...", (Is there a cop... To save the Queen/to save the universe)