[jgauth]

"The Hunt for Red October" had an interesting way of handling this with the Russian speakers. The movie starts with them speaking Russian with English subtitles, does a slow zoom into the Russian-speaker's lips, and switches to English mid-sentence.

[jkingsman]

With some elegance, too; iirc they pivot languages on the word "Golgotha" as he reads from the bible, the Latin word for a location near Jerusalem, but having a non-English/non-Russian word be when they switch made it a lot less jarring. Plus, having it be during a read-out-loud-from-book portion allowed for more measured cadence that smoothed the switch but probably would have felt jarring if the audience were parsing multi-character dialogue when it happened.

[nwallin]

> they pivot languages on the word "Golgotha"

"Armageddon" actually. Poignant because it's a movie about a nuclear ballistic submarine. But not a particularly non-English word.

[1718627440]

> "Golgotha", the latin word

Isn't it Hebrew? (for example see John 19,17)

[stevage]

I found that incredibly clunky when I saw it. Also, it's a little bit extra jarring that Sean Connery goes from speaking Russian to speaking English with a Scottish accent.

[3cats-in-a-coat]

That's just how the Babel Fish works. It translates perfectly, but it tacks on a random accent.

[sms95]

That trick has been used in movies before that too. "Judgment at Nuremberg" does something similar. A character is speaking German, slow zoom, then a switch to English.

[3cats-in-a-coat]

We're zooming into their miiiiiind!