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Arabic for “D’oh!” BY RYA AYSWA HY MURT The constant flurry of activity in Education City has included some exciting talks in the past but none arrested our attention like the one scheduled for January 19 at the Translation and Interpreting Institute (TII) – Dr Rashid Yahiaoui’s insight into the constraints behind dubbing The Simpsons in Arabic. CAMPUS caught up with him for a little pre-presentation teaser.
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Dr Rashid Yahiaoui
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ne of the newest member universities of HBKU, T II has had quite a debut. The latest program to be introduced here is the Masters in Audiovisual Translation which happens to be Dr Rashid Yahiaoui’s specialty. He and his two colleagues handle various aspects of the course that covers subtitling (including for deaf and hard of hearing), dubbing and audio description for the blind. The 11 students who are part of the first batch are currently busy in projects involving dubbing films, documentaries and more from English to Arabic. “Arab countries consume a lot of audiovisual entertainment,” he says, “as evidenced by the 1300+ satellite channels in the region and the rapid growth in social media.” And to satiate the appetite of the millions of viewers tuning in every day, channels often turn towards content from foreign lands (made palatable to Arab audiences, of course). “A lot of sitcoms are being subtitled or dubbed (which is ten times more expensive) depending on the age group the program is aimed at,” he says. From Turkish soap operas and Korean sitcoms to Argentinean telenovelas and Bollywood movies, Arab T V is a funnel for the best of global entertainment. The Simpsons has for a while now been a staple of the Middle East’s T V diet, usually subtitled. But ten years ago a most daring experiment was undertaken – the dubbing (or essentially, the arabization) of the venerable animated sitcom. Homer became Omar, Bart was rechristened as Badr and the Shamshoons lived in a non-descript American town with an unusually big Arab community. Superficially the changes didn’t seem that drastic, but delve deeper, and the Arabic version turned out to be a strange, alien copy of the original that confused and angered old fans and failed to make any
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“My interest sprang from the fact that The Simpsons is such an icon of American pop culture and a satirical critique of every aspect of American society. It is one of the longest running animated series yet it didn’t work in Arabic for a variety of reasons,” he says. new ones. The program was scrapped after barely four seasons; some episodes that had already been dubbed never saw the light of day. And this ended the attempt to introduce this dysfunctional American family to a new audience. Several years later, avid fan Dr Yahiaoui decided to analyse this short-lived series to get a better idea of the ideological and cultural constraints in audiovisual translation. “My interest sprang from the fact that The Simpsons is such an icon of American pop culture and a satirical critique of every aspect of American society. It is one of the longest running animated series yet it didn’t work in Arabic for a variety of reasons,” he says. “One version is that Gracie Films pulled the plug on it because the adaptation, that was intended to be more digestible to Arabs, was a show that was no longer the Simpsons.” If Homer doesn’t eat pork ribs or drink beer, he isn’t Homer; if Bart doesn’t do devilish things, Ned Flanders isn’t annoyingly religious or Smithers doesn’t harbor secret feelings for Mr Burns, what is it exactly that we are watching?
And these were just the obvious ones. “The Simpsons is the Aladdin’s Cave for translation bumps. There are many cultural references, puns and idiomatic expressions that don’t have an equivalent in the Arab world.” It also tackled a lot of controversies and much of the cursing, nudity, criticism of religion, etc. was considered not suitable for the region. “It was intriguing for me to see how the translator managed to get around the difficulties of portraying these to the Arab audience. I thoroughly enjoyed analyzing the episodes; alternatively laughing my head off at the ingenuity of script writers and marveling at the deftness in which the translator dealt with many of the problems.” All we could think was, what an insanely cool and fun way to earn a PhD. Dr Yahiaoui, in his talk, will be addressing the various manipulations that had to be done to the original for it to be able to air in the Middle East. “The constraints that led to these changes might have been intrinsic to the translator (conscious or otherwise) or imposed on him externally by the broadcaster or producer,” he explains. “There was a lot of self censoring – often because the content was deemed blasphemous. Sometimes changes were made to reflect positively on Egypt (the translators and voice actors were mostly Egyptian). One example is the episode in which Selma and Patty visit Egypt and return with plenty of complaints about the flies as big as a camel's head and the smelly Nile. The translator replaced 'Egypt' with 'Africa' and suddenly Selma was bellyaching about the whole continent and not just the country, which probably doesn’t hurt as badly. “While working on my thesis I also had extensive interviews with the translator who I realized had an anti-American slant. In many ways, he wanted to expose the American myth of the perfect society; the land of freedom and opportunity. But at the same time, he also wanted to challenge some taboos in the Arab world. “Like the episode where Homer finds Bart smoking; "As punishment, he makes him smoke a whole pack,” Dr Yahiaoui remembers. Not exactly parenting 101 but the translator left that unchanged, considering how wide-spread smoking was in the region. “References to gambling were also left alone because he felt this was happening in the Arab world and it had to be addressed.” These, together with external interferences, changed the very DNA of the series. Homer would have had a breakdown if he knew he was being denied beer in this version. Instead he had to sustain himself on juice! “The translator had suggested a compromise; to use She’er, a non-alcoholic malt drink, which also worked well for the dubbing but this was shot down.” Understandably, sexual references and nudity were totally removed. Religious references, irrespective of which religion, were handled with kid gloves, and often completely omitted. This was especially hard since religion was one of the Simpsons writers’ favourite punching bags. But the translator seemed to have at least won some other battles. “Very often the series truly excelled in capturing the essence of the sarcastic comments. The main reason for this is the fact that it was dubbed into Egyptian vernacular which is more flexible, has more puns and street expressions that the more rigid Modern Standard Arabic. The writer was against MSA from the very beginning because he was so sure that the humor will be lost and it took him three months to negotiate that, according to him.” Despite this,
Homer the Heretic, the episode where Homer rejects the Church and starts his own religion, was never dubbed in Arabic. Incidentally this is considered one of the best Simpsons episodes of all time.
much of it was indeed lost in translation. It was a tricky proposition from the start because the channel wanted the show to cater to both kids and adults. “So the producers had to make it as acceptable for the kids in addition to ensuring it didn’t conflict with Islamic values. So in that sense, it got the job done. Censorship is not always negative especially when it is done in accordance with your ethics and culture to protect impressionable kids. But for those who had seen the original Simpsons, it was a disaster.” However, Dr Yahiaoui still considers this worth the attempt. “There is no perfect translation; it is not possible. But that doesn’t mean we don’t even try to cross the divide between countries and bridge cultures. We still need to see what’s out there and communicate our ideas,” he says. “Yes, it was unfair to both the audience and the creatives behind the original (this was in fact one of the contentious issues), but that's the essence of translation in these cases; if you are being entirely faithful , you are risking it not even being broadcast.” At least those who had never watched the Simpsons now loved or hated it in a (reasonably) informed manner. Dr Yahiaoui will be talking more about this during his talk, with clips from the episodes to illustrate his point. Drop in at T II on January 19 between 2-3 pm for this fascinating presentation. Dr Yahiaoui assures us there’ll be donuts. Now repeat this to yourself in Homer’s voice: “Mmmm... Donuts...”
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