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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!
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!!!
Probably just a spoof... but who knows :)
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.
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.
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?