‘The Simpsons Movie’: From Serbia to Springfield, New Zealand
Travel Blog • Jim Benning • 07.31.07 | 11:22 AM ET
Of course, “The Simpsons” has been a near global phenomenon for years, but the recent release of “The Simpsons Movie” gave the Los Angeles Times a fine excuse to explore just how widespread the animated family’s popularity is—and the resulting challenges producers face. Today’s story notes, among other oddities, the 12-foot-tall glazed donut sculpture built by Fox at the entrance to Springfield, New Zealand, a town so small it doesn’t have a movie theater but that, nevertheless, drew more than 3,000 people last week to “eat hot dogs, doughnuts and French fries and to greet Homer and Bart, who took the train from Christchurch 65 kilometers away for the event.” The show gets dubbed into 15 languages, but the movie has been dubbed into 31 languages, including Dutch and Thai. Adding all the required voice-overs hasn’t been easy.
Reports the Times:
Actors who did the voice-overs had to be careful to stay loyal to the Simpsons’ cadences and tone—difficult when translating into, say, Thai. The Fox team, including Jean and producer-writer James L. Brooks, listened to actors in German, Turkish and Latvian and if they understood, they knew they were on to something. They had to find talent to dub in Castilian Spanish as well as a more Latin American Spanish and in Parisian French as well as Quebecois. In cities where the show is popular the studio had to make both subtitled and dubbed prints so “Simpsons” TV fans could watch it in English or in their native language.
At times, translating “The Simpsons” has been the least of producers’ worries.
Remember when producer James L. Brooks had to apologize to the people of Rio de Janeiro over that big monkeys-in-Rio controversy?
Related on World Hum:
* Update: ‘The Simpsons’ Extend Olive Branch to Brazil
* Rio de Janeiro vs. ‘The Simpsons’
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Jim Benning is the editor and co-founder of World Hum.
Carpetblogger 07.31.07 | 1:31 PM ET
Gah, tell me about it. It’s next to impossible to find an original version in Istanbul.
Celebrity Foods 02.29.08 | 5:31 PM ET
I never really thought about the Simpsons as being a movie for other countries. How do other countries handle the irreverence of the show, especially since most countries seem to look down upon the US. Do they keep the jokes which may be offensive to other cultures or do they change the dialog?