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I have never seen a single episode of 'Arrow' TV series, but I follow movie-related news and watch almost all trailers or any mini-footage introducing movies/shows that come out on YouTube.

Some time ago the official YouTube channel of The CW released a featurette promoting a new season of 'Arrow'. It was called 'Bratva Trailer' where "bratva" is a Russian word in English letters meaning a group of closest friends who are usually engaged in criminal activity. In this footage there were shown some signs in Russian and I heard that funny imitation of a Russian accent. But it got me wondering why would The CW name a footage so that not many native English speakers understood it, given that the show is American.

Then a couple of days ago they do the same thing releasing a trailer named 'Kapiushon' which means "hood" in Russian. This time there wasn't even the slightest reference in the footage to the name. I get it that Arrow himself is wearing a hood, but in that particular trailer nobody wore it at all. And again, no native English speaker would understand the name.

Question: Why did The CW name two footages in a foreign language without an explanation what-so-ever?

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    I don't get your problem. Why would a single term be such an issue? It's not like the trailer is entirely in Russian. Viewers who'll watch the episode will learn what the word means, I guess, or perhaps regular viewers already know the word. Trailers aren't meant to explain anything, that's what the 40 minute ep is for.
    – BCdotWEB
    Mar 22, 2017 at 12:51
  • @BCdotWEB Like I wrote the trailers didn't explain the titles which makes the latter pretty much meaningless sets of letters for most of English speaking audience. My question (neither problem, nor issue) was why would they do that, not how trailers reflect the meanings of episodes.
    – user151486
    Mar 22, 2017 at 12:56
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    "I have never seen a single episode of 'Arrow' TV series" Well, there's your problem. I haven't seen the most recent season of Arrow, but the "Bratva" criminal organisation is featured in previous seasons. Possibly the other words would also be familiar to entirely English-speaking people who have actually watched the show.
    – Anthony Grist
    Mar 22, 2017 at 16:48

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In the episode, Oliver was addressed "Kapiushion" by a Russian character. So that is where they got the title. The episode title gives a mystery and takes the trailer viewer to watch why the episode is titled as it is.

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The title directly correlates with the whole plot and meaning of the episode. In bratva, oliver gets the true meaning of brotherhood and sticking by your friends no matter what... Thats why bratva, means brother or brotherhood. Kapiushon or hood has him hiding behind his hood to try and manipulate himself into thinking that he doesn't enjoy killing and that the monster in himself is separated when he takes off the hood. The words in russian are in english the tell the normal viewer what it says, and the whole title is symbolic and explained throughout the episodes.

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  • Obviously. The question was: "why do they assume we will know"
    – Yorik
    Mar 28, 2017 at 14:27
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Because is gives it a foreign flavor, a certain je ne sais quoi.

The specific meaning simply does not matter.

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  • You're right, on one hand. But on the other, one has to be familiar with the Russian language to know the word "kapiushon" gives the title a Slavic flavor, not Oriental, not Hispanic. Otherwise what effect can produce a flavor of nobody knows what? It's like I make up my own word and say it has a flavor. All I mean is that these two Russian words are not stereotypically associated with something Russian to the American audience. But I agree with you, there is a flavor.
    – user151486
    Mar 22, 2017 at 17:06

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