d'oh, in arabic

A lot of discussion is going on these days about the show running on MBC in Ramadan that is an Arabized version of The Simpsons. I haven't seen it myself, but according to this article: Arabized Simpsons not getting many laughs. Of course this is no surprise, and I have always felt that Arabizing anything is not a good idea. It just seems to me to be the lazy way out: we don't have to create a new show, let's just arabize one. And the process of arabizing itself is not an easy task that could turn into a ridiculous tastless imitation if not taken seriously. I mean, yes in the Arabic Simpsons, Homer, now called Omar, can drink soda instead of beer and eat traditional cookies (kahk) instead of doughnuts. But the real problem is the language. As someone wondered, according to the article, how the heck are they going to translate something like "Hi-diddly-ho, neighbors!"?

Actually, I am also thinking of the simple "d'oh", don't you think that even this needs to be arabized? Normally, no Arabic-speaking person would shout "d'oh" when s/he drops a glass of water or says something wrong. And given the fact that there seems to be no consensus on the Arabic equivalents for other interjections like "oops", "ouch" and "wow", I think "d'oh" would join in the list of expressions that are used in the Arab world as if we had no other way of expressing whatever these words mean before. This is really strange since interjections are basically expressions of emotions, like surprise or excitement, and surely it doesn't make sense to borrow an expression of emotion from another language. Of course it's the influence of the media, but I think we should try to get back to the roots of our emotive expressions and revive them.

Personally, I think the typical Egyptian expression "يالهوى" (yalahwy) goes a long way (with the right intonation) in expressing many different emotions like surprise, boredom, excitement and of course utter distress (accompanied by a smack on one's chest) :)

Mai