This study offers historical and theoretical approaches to film versions, speech/voice and translation in early French, German and Swedish sound film. Media, translation and speech are discussed in terms of "universal language" vs. "linguistic diversity", "media transposition" vs. "language translation", and "speech as words" vs. "speech as body". The reading of versions and translation as an issue beyond specific languages, involving the "transposition" of media inscriptions and the "doubling" of bodies, also reframes speech as an ethnic and cultural signifier in a European context.