October 19th, 2005

Filed under:
Television
3 Comments »

Omar, Quit Strangling Badr!

After 17 seasons, The Simpsons are finally coming to the Arab world. However, there are a few changes:

So MBC is making some changes as the characters go from American to Arab. They will remove references to things forbidden by the Koran, such as bacon, beer and other references that might be construed as offensive.

Homer Simpson’s ubiquitous Duff beer will now be soda in the Arab version of the show. Hot dogs will become Egyptian beef sausages, and donuts will become popular Arab cookies called “kahk.” Moe’s Bar has been completely written out of “Al Shamshoon.”

Sex is out as well. And what will the Arab audience make of the Christian, Jewish and Hindu stereotypes?

I’m not sure this is going to fly. The political, religious, literary and pop culture references in The Simpsons are so dense, so central to the humour and so North American. I imagine it’ll be a bit like us watching Japanese gameshows with a combination of bemusement and disgust.

Comments: 3 Responses so far

Dean
October 19th, 2005
12:22 pm

I’ll go beyond ‘not sure it’ll work’, to ‘no way it’ll work’. The Simpsons is really all about pop culture (that’s how virtually all of the humour works) and there’s no way it will work translated to another culture. Bad idea.

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Andrea
October 19th, 2005
3:33 pm

Is there a market for this among Middle Easterners who’ve spent time in the US? Maybe that’s the fit.

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alexis
October 19th, 2005
8:23 pm

I don’t think the Simpsons translate well to other cultures, as they are so North American.

Case in point, a riend of mine said that they were shown in Spanish in Guatemala. Her Guatemalan friends couldn’t understand the Spanish bee man, who was still speaking Spanish in the translated Spanish version.

I don’t really get the point of him either, but this was a linguistic and cultural facet that didn’t break through at all.

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