Getting a French-speaking audience to theaters in the United States to watch a post-World War II-era drama about a reform school isn’t going to make a movie distributor much money.

That’s part of the reason why “Les Choristes,” France’s current Academy Award hopeful for best foreign film, is coming out in this country as “The Chorus” and is being advertised as a universal feel-good story about how singing in a choir turns a group of troubled boys around. In Canada, where it was released a few months ago, it was “The Choir.” This fall in England it was “The Choirboys,” probably the closest to the original title, but perhaps not the most strategic choice for America.

“I’ve always been a fan of original titles,” says Gary Faber, vice president of marketing at Miramax Films, which is releasing the film here. “But this one was a simple decision. People couldn’t pronounce it.”

The last few years have shown that foreign movies, with the right combination of art, luck, and canny marketing, can make real money. Three years ago “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” made more than $128 million, rather surprising for a movie about a bunch of people fighting over a sword in medieval China. The same year, “Amelie,” about a French imp, pulled down $33 million. In 2002, Mira Nair’s “Monsoon Wedding” proved that a film primarily in Hindi, Punjabi, and Urdu could still make $14 million. And this fall, “Hero” made $53 million despite being held for two years by its distributor.

To pull in those kind of numbers, you can’t rely on just the art-house crowd. You have to seduce viewers who generally stay away from subtitled movies. That means being both good and very careful when it comes to promotion. Depending on a film’s subject and its intended audience, trailers and ads play up its familiar or exotic aspects, even while downplaying the fact that viewers will have to read their way through it. This can involve completely wordless trailers, English-language voiceovers that aren’t in the films themselves, or print ads that create interest without implying anything too foreign.

It’s not so much about trickery — making the films look American so people won’t realize they’re going to be seeing a foreign film — as about getting audiences to long to see a film so much that they’ll go even if they have to read what’s being said.

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