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Homer Becomes Omar
geekster writes "With Omar as Homer, and Badr substituted for Bart, The Simpsons is now playing on Arab television.
But in order not to risk offending an Arab audience, the characters in Al Shamshoon, as the show is now called, have modified some of their most distinguishable traits." And you thought internationalization was hard for software!
Have to wear a Burqa?
time is a perception of a being's consciousness
time is your 6th sense, the wierd ones are 7+
This reminds me of the Doki Doki Panic/smb2 incident. Super Mario 2 was originally a Fuji Television promotion starring an arabian family called Doki Doki Panic. The people at Nintendo USA thought the Japanese version of SMB2 was too difficult, so they changed the Arabian characters in Doki Doki Panic to Mario and his friends. It's a really interesting story. Check out more here.
First you animate. Then you SUSPEND!!!
Taking Homer and stripping out all of the Americanisms...
Yes, but it looks like it will still be set in America:
FTA: The dysfunctional family, that continues to live in Springfield...
Assuming that there isn't a Springfield somewhere in the Middle East?
Bradley Holt
There's a movie in France called "Les visiteurs" (the visitors). It's a hilarious movie about some middle-age french aristocrat and his servant time-travelling into our age and messing things up right and left. The movie is very funny... in France, because it relies almost exclusively on twists of the French language, and on French cultural references. I heard this movie was adapted to the US market and did a perfect flop there.
Well I believe it'll be the same for Omar Simpson: the original Homer is funny because it deforms and amplifies flaws in the US society. It's reasonably funny in many western countries, because the american culture is kind of universal, and even when it's dubbed, it's not too hard to understand half of the jokes (many very US-centric jokes are lost in France, Sweden or Spain though, particularly those involving famous personalities known only to the US public).
But in countries far from westerm values, and not as developed, with different and sometimes stricter sets of moral values, adapting the Simpsons to suit these people will suck the marrow out of the bone. It'll the arab version of the US "the visitors" flop. Either give them the full unabridged, ashamedly US version of Homer and let half of them love it and the other half hate it, or give them Omar and let all of them hate it.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
>>Can anyone give an Arabic translation of this? the English equivalent would be something like "Oh my fucking god" only a little less vulgar.
download and burn linux with one click on windows
The recent violence of Sept. 11 and the Iraq war has had an immense impact on the psyche of both peoples. This will translate into a deeper knowledge of each other and, hopefully, more understanding.
Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Knowledge of one's enemies transmutes to some extent in a sharing of cultures. Violence, as the ultimate virus, might be seen as injecting plasmids into each sides cultural DNA.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
I live in Quebec (Canada) and we have a french version since forever. They tried for years to make the text more "local" and it ended up being very weird someone because some things just don't fit out of the US context. You laugh anyway because you still get the original joke. And someone it just doesn't fit so much that they keep it american ("I never been so proud to be American" in front of the toilet that flush like in America).
On the other hand, this is the only show where I think that the voice acting is better than the original. Not that the original voice acting isn't good but actors in the french version are just doing a better job.
Fortunately, the ones for the last few years are more sane and portray the familly as 100% american.
But the worse adaptation we have is King of the Hill. They decided to remove any and all reference to US in the text and turns it into total nonsense.
Both shows are funny to watch even tranlated but we are in a North American context too and can understand the jokes even when they are butchered. I guess it won't be the case in middle east...
Slashdot anagrams to "Sad Sloth"
You could ask Salman Rushdie, who has a Muslim background. He wrote a parody which was not well received by fundamental Muslims, and has been sentanced to death for abandoning the Muslim faith.
The book was so horrible, that even Cat Stevens agreeded somewhat that Salman should be killed. He later appologized, but the point is-- you're not supposed to agree with the ravings of a lunatic religious leader in the first place.
My post may have a humorous tone, but the events described above are real.
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
The real burning question regarding an arabic simpons edit: Who's working at the Kwik-E-Mart?
I mean, I'm sure guys like Apu working at convenience stores is a much less common sight in Syria than it is in the American midwest. Would they even get the joke over there?
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
the arabs seem eager to consume western culture, despite the tags of "inferior" and "dirty" they have associated with the west. However, it seems nearly none wants to translate arabic content into other languages. Such a weird thing for a culture whose language supposedly is the world's 4th most spoken language (altough, in practice, there's no single arabic that can be understood in all arab countries, not even by a long shot).
personally i think this is a wonderful project, it's a shame he's already having skittish reaction from hollywood execs
if we could just laugh more, in both the muslim world, and the west, at each other, how awesome a leap into a better world would that be?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Melon Farmers is a reference to the BBC TV cut of "Repo Man" where the words Mother-fucker were replaced by Melon farmer
On Canadian television, "mother fucker" is often censored to "*blank* fucker". yes, they cut out mother and leave the fucker. Im totally serious.
7-11s run by Indian guys
Nuclear Power Plants
Catholic or Christian churches with Evangelical stereotypes
Comic book stores
Nursing homes
donuts
Tom and Jerry
American Football, Politics, National Forests, and dive bars?
If not, how is a majority of this humor going to translate? It's a heavy parody of American culture. I'm just not sure how that's supposed to sell.
Television is not emasculated to suit the whims of anyone.
The first season of Sailor Moon had a bunch of evil henchmen who all dress the same.
In the original, one of them is a very effeminate man dating of of the other bad guys.
For the U.S. dub, that man was turned into a woman: Literally emasculated.
You can't take the sky from me...
The last time I criticized a government official/agency, I got a call from the police making it clear that "they know who I am", and I should just drop the who thing. This was a complaint to the Mayor that the police were refusing to take reports on hit and runs in my neighborhood. It was made clear that discussions on car crashes in my neighborhood would not be tolorated.
So, I can tell you first hand. You can only criticize in the US if you have the power to take the person and their entire organization on with guns, OR if your complaint carries no weight.
My solution was to move to a new area where I was under the radar and keep my mouth shut.
well, they don't make fun of scientologists
errera hunamum ets
"In America, you can go on television and air criticisms of Republican, Christian or any other viewpoints; and you may get a debate or -at worse- a reprimand."
Actually in America if you stridently critisize republicans you can lose your job. Especially if your job is in the media, or in education or the govt. One the American taleban targets you and the talking heads on fox news and talk radio start braying your job is on the chopping block.
evil is as evil does
unadulterated british sitcoms are nicely popular on american tv, eg PBS. they don't get run on the commercial networks but there are still plenty of fans who watch it in its untouched original format (excluding the PAL->NTSC conversion of course :) doctor who while not being a sitcom, has a decent enough audience in the US. there are many unadulterated british programs which run just fine on american tv.
there are exceptions of course, all in the family was a remake of the british series "Till Death Do Us Part". the american series sanford and son was a remake of the british "steptoe and son". these remakes were worse than the british originals? other than "its not british so it sucks", what objective reasoning can you provide?
japanese anime also seems to do just fine in the US, fans seem to prefer the original japanese dialogue with subtitles. this seems to somewhat counter your assertion that all americans want is americanized remakes.
You aren't. You aren't forced to watch The Simpsons or anything else on TV. You aren't forced to own a TV for that matter. Cultural values != individual values.
That sword cuts both ways. You aren't forced to listen to Howard Stern or watch explicit television either so why can't they be broadcast?
Who? You mean the NY times reporter that went to jail to protect somebody high in the white house? You mean that NY times?
evil is as evil does
I think your remark about openness of society about, for example sex, of 'the western world' applies more to the united states than to western Europe. In the Netherlands there's even sex on 'public' cable television (not state sponsored though),there are no problems with nudity in any media (not even for children) and being a prostitute is officially 'just a job'. As for the rest of Europe, it might not be exactly the same, but it's not that different at all. I think the USA is one of the most prudish countries of the western world.
Please don't link low pregnancy rate with abortion this way. You'd only fuel (as if they need any) the already crazy anti-abortionists. If you compare the low birth and abortion rates for teenagers in Western Europe to the American figures you'll see that there's no correlation. (see this and use google). I suspect the same is true for Japan, but I couldn't find any figures.
As a side node, I'm not a big supporter of abortion, I too am troubled by the notion that an unborn child is not considered human until it has reached a certain age. However I very much dislike the self-righteousness of some of the (mostly christian) 'pro-life' groups.
(Same AC as grandparent)
I think your remark about openness of society about, for example sex, of 'the western world' applies more to the united states than to western Europe.
Agreed. I've only visited Europe on vacation, but lived in the U.S. for a while. However, even then I think there's a bit of a difference between western Europe in that sex is both open and closed. It's weird in a sense if you think about it, but I think it's typically Japanese that every story has two sides. (Honne and Tatemae, the best equivalent translation I can think of is "The true story" and "The official story".) It's that way in every aspect really. For example, technically the brothels are illegal, but everyone knows that banning them will simply create an underground black market, so while they are still illegal, they're regulated by the police. I suppose it's kind of like marijuana in the Netherlands, openly available and illegal. The pretense is that these brothels are public baths. No sex, nope, just a bath. A really expensive bath.
Please don't link low pregnancy rate with abortion this way. You'd only fuel (as if they need any) the already crazy anti-abortionists.
I don't have any hard facts (too lazy to look them up), but whether you like it or not, it's a rather obvious truth in Japan. Again, the Official Story v.s. the True Story. As long as no one knows you were pregnant, and it was aborted, then officially it never happened. Again, you can like it or dislike it, but it's the current situation. Part of it probably has to do with the fact that highschoolers with kids aren't very well accepted, which is the "closed" side of Japanese culture, unlike what I saw in the U.S.
If you compare the low birth and abortion rates for teenagers in Western Europe to the American figures you'll see that there's no correlation. (see this and use google). I suspect the same is true for Japan, but I couldn't find any figures.
Agreed, again. I'm not stating that the low teenage pregnancy rate is entirely due to abortions. Like my original post said, I suspect a lot of it has to do with the wide availability of condoms, and kids that know better to use one than not. I would have a very, very hard time believing, however, that the low pregnancy rate had anything to do with the age at which kids first have sex over here though. I suspect there's no real difference between the U.S. and Japan in that sense, hardly suprising since it's a natural urge that doesn't make consideration for cultural differences. That doesn't mean there aren't a fair number of teenage abortions though.
As a side node, I'm not a big supporter of abortion, I too am troubled by the notion that an unborn child is not considered human until it has reached a certain age. However I very much dislike the self-righteousness of some of the (mostly christian) 'pro-life' groups.
The difference between what I observed in the U.S., and what I observe in Japan, is that in the U.S. much too often the entire issue is handled in high emotion and lacks logical thought, often (but not always) directly related to particular religious beliefs. Abortion isn't a cool, casual act in Japan either, but I think people weigh the consequences of the decision in a much more logical manner. This might be partially related to the fact that while the Japanese have been very superstitious in some ways, they are certainly not, and never really were, religious. Spiritual, yes, religious, no. Thus, the moral connections to religion are mostly non-existant.
As to the idea of when exactly life begins, well, I don't expect that to be answered in any acceptable logical way for a long, long time, if ever. It would likely break down further into the question of what exactly "life" is in the first place, which is exactly the issues struck in most modern nations when it comes to brain dead people and organ transplants. I see it as a kind of Zen-like question, where the answer is in t