Most of the travelling we do is in the movies.Even the most frequent of flyers would be hard pressed to see the sites we view so casually on the silver screen.Filmmakers love to tell their stories in exotic locales.But just as a stage set may at times have to fill in for Deadwood,the exotic languages spoken in those exotic locales have to be tamed for local consumption.Eric Hynes has put together a great video slide show over at Slate to examine how Hollywood represents foreign speech.
Since the dawn of the talkies,filmmakers have had to face the challenge of foreign tongues."Many filmmakers are content to shoot against a painted backdrop,toss in a few bonjours,and call it France,while others go to great lengths to have characters look and speak as authentically as possible.There are no hard and fast rules,but it's a tricky business - directors must balance the expectations of realism with ease of viewing.They want dialogue to be convincing,but they don't want to alienate their audiences with accents or subtitles that aren't essential to the story."

Hollywood Does Foreign Languages