@promgabi said:
Handling TMDB Language Mismatches: Exploring Efficient Approaches
Hello everyone,
Thank you in advance for your help and insights.
We’ve run into a situation where requesting title data in a specific language (e.g., Spanish)
sometimes returns the original text mislabeled under that language, making it hard to distinguish whether a valid translation exists.

One possible solution is to make an extra API call to retrieve the list of available languages for each title and then choose which version to display. However, we’re concerned about performance and the overall request load.

Is there any recommended method or best practice for handling these mislabeled “translations” without having to request the available languages separately every time? Any guidance on detecting or managing invalid language fields using the existing API workflows would be greatly appreciated.

Post here a case of a movie where this problem occurs.
Better yet, post the API Request that brought this incorrect or problematic response.

Problems with API Request

In order for someone to help you with API Request questions,
it is critical that you post here the API Request you are sending to the TMDb server.
Remember to replace your Key with MY_KEY , YOUR_KEY , THE_KEY , or something like that.

Not the programming code/script you used to build the API Request.
But the API Request that is sent to the TMDb server.
Or the API Request you would like to send.

@ticao2 said:

@promgabi said:
Handling TMDB Language Mismatches: Exploring Efficient Approaches
Hello everyone,
Thank you in advance for your help and insights.
We’ve run into a situation where requesting title data in a specific language (e.g., Spanish)
sometimes returns the original text mislabeled under that language, making it hard to distinguish whether a valid translation exists.

One possible solution is to make an extra API call to retrieve the list of available languages for each title and then choose which version to display. However, we’re concerned about performance and the overall request load.

Is there any recommended method or best practice for handling these mislabeled “translations” without having to request the available languages separately every time? Any guidance on detecting or managing invalid language fields using the existing API workflows would be greatly appreciated.

Post here a case of a movie where this problem occurs.
Better yet, post the API Request that brought this incorrect or problematic response.

Problems with API Request

In order for someone to help you with API Request questions,
it is critical that you post here the API Request you are sending to the TMDb server.
Remember to replace your Key with MY_KEY , YOUR_KEY , THE_KEY , or something like that.

Not the programming code/script you used to build the API Request.
But the API Request that is sent to the TMDb server.
Or the API Request you would like to send.

Below is an example of a movie (ID 1429743) returning what seems to be its original text in Thai, even though the request is specifying Spanish (es-ES). We’re using the following request (API key replaced by THE_KEY):

GET https://api.themoviedb.org/3/movie/1429743?api_key=THE_KEY&language=es-ES

What happens:

• We request the title and overview in Spanish (es-ES).
• Instead, the API returns Thai text: "แก๊งหิมะเดือด", labeled as though it were Spanish.

Additional info:

• When using en-US, it properly returns the English text.
• If we query /movie/1429743/translations, it shows multiple languages—including Spanish—but the Spanish entry is actually the original Thai text.

We’ve followed the official TMDB documentation, using:

GET https://api.themoviedb.org/3/{tip}/{tmdb_id}?api_key={TMDB_API_KEY}&language={lang}

In this case, {tip} is movie, and {lang} is either en-US or es-ES. For most titles, it works fine, but certain ones—like ID 1429743—seem mislabeled. Any insight on preventing or handling these inaccurate language labels would be greatly appreciated.

It seems that you're referring to the wrong property in the response. Instead of the original_title, which contains a title in the entry's original language (Thai in this case), check the titleproperty, which should have the title translated to the language of your choice. Below is the relevant snippet of the response.

{
  "original_language": "th",
  "original_title": "แก๊งหิมะเดือด",
  "title": "Chicos de hielo en el trópico",
}