Our study case aims at showing the gap between the message given by a documentary film about problems of integration of poor immigrants in Israel, and the French version produced by the French-German TV channel Arte according to a certain language policy requiring a standardized French. "St. Jean/Sandjin" (1993) tells us the stories of six immigrants, coming from different countries. Their ability to adapt to the new society is mirrored in their accent, their command of Hebrew, their grammatical mistakes, their simultaneous use of several languages or words borrowed from different languages. The translator insisted on indicating these linguistic features in the subtitles and in the voice over but Arte strongly requested a standardized French. Isn't the strict application of the acceptability principle a way to alter the meanning of the documentary?