It is often assumed that the final text resulting from film translation is only conditioned by technical constraints. The author argues that the apparently objective, material constraints are in fact conventions or, in the terminology of Descriptive Translation Studies, norms, which raises the questions: How much of the target text is manipulated, consciously or not, by norms rather than constraints? Can one detect normalising, repressing, levelling and censoring strategies in operation where there is no need for them other than the need for ideological, moral, and social control? The paper examines a small corpus of mainly subtiteld French films.