La Femme Nikita is the American title, the French title is
Nikita. I guess they added "La Femme" so people could immediately figure out it's a French film — from a grammatical standpoint, La Femme Nikita (= The Woman Nikita) is really awkward phrasing.
I understand the need to translate titles sometimes. Two examples from recent films:
-
Far from the Madding Crowd could be difficult to say at the box office if you're not familiar with the English language (and especially tough for this film that targets a more 'mature' audience, it appears). So it was translated as
Loin de la foule déchainée (also, that was the title of the original novel too, but it seems to me it would've been translated even if it wasn't).
-
Trainwreck has "wr", a combo of letters you'll never hear together in French ; it could demand some effort to pronounce it, so marketers prefer to just change it completely — it's titled
Crazy Amy in France... yep, another English title, but simpler words, I call that the
Very Bad Trip effect (the French title for
The Hangover , and the first time I can recall an English title replaced by another English title for the French market, there have been a few instances since, usually comedies. "Very", "Crazy", "Bad", "American" & "Sex" are often used in these new titles. It'd be funny if it wasn't a bit sad and also a commentary of the English level of most people, who understand basic words but are thrown off when it gets a tad more complicated, so marketers simplify it for them. Also,
Pitch Perfect became
The Hit Girls in 2012 only to release the sequel as
Pitch Perfect 2 yesterday... now that's a first.
Anyway, in this case, I agree it's pretty stupid to change the title from "
The Babadook" to "
Der Babadook". There really was nothing lost in translation here.