The underlying notion of translation – whether we deal with printed literature, feature films or nonfictional texts – is based on the assumption that ‘it is possible to map aspects of one language onto aspects of the other’ (Malmkjær, 1999: 17). In this interlingual ‘mapping’ process, one would tend to consider culture-based and other verbal obstacles in source texts nothing but minor hurdles easily overcome on the road toward the target text – no matter the semiotic structure of the text in question. Much along these lines, when talking about film translation, Whitman (2001: 144) states that ‘there is no such thing as “untranslatability”, a term I hear all too often when collaborating with directors and translators working on dubbed versions of American movies’. In her view, the way to secure success in translation is through linking the message of the original dialogue to the minds of the foreign audience: ‘Translation means being aware of the intent of the original as well as the target audience’s common pool of allusions’ (Whitman, 2001: 147).

However, if intended target audiences have little knowledge or interest in the foreign setting of an otherwise interesting film, there is still a way out. Instead of dubbing or subtitling the foreign production – neither method seems to go down well with US audiences – one may ‘translate’ the entire work; that is, produce an English-language remake of the original film. Especially with French films, this method has been resorted to frequently (Wehn, 2001; Weissbrod, 2004). Even Danish films are sometimes remade for the American market, like Ole Bornedal’s Nattevagten (1994) – remade in the United States as Night watch (1997) – and Susanne Bier’s Den eneste ene (1999), which was remade in 2002 in the UK, titled

The One and Only. Both Danish films won critical and public acclaim in Denmark and abroad, whereas both remakes were fl ops in the English speaking world, artistically as well as commercially (Internet Movie Database).

The problems of preserving the original spirit and appeal in remakes bring us back to the issue of fidelity.