have_comments not working on multi-language site

i have a site mysite.com and a page that shows details of events event_details.php. On the bottom of this page comments are active for that event.

on the main english site mysite.com/event_details the comments show up as expected and all is good.

on the 2nd language version of the site mysite.com/lang/event_details the have_comments() always comes back as false.
i can put echo statements in the comments.php file that is correctly accessed by the comment_template call and it will print the line before the if (have_comments()), but not the line inside the if.

Again, this problem is only on the secondary language site, it works fine on the main english version. the page code is the same for both the english and other language.

Anyone have any ideas what i should be looking for to fix this?
thanks in advance!