How Homer Became Omar

They're a famously dysfunctional family from small-town America but suddenly they have all learned Arabic and started talking like Egyptians.

The Simpsons have changed their name to Shamsoon. Bart, the skateboarding, gum-chewing delinquent has become Badr. Homer, his slobbish dad, has become Omar and has given up Duff beer and pork sausages, at least for the duration of Ramadan.

As a treat for TV viewers during the month of fasting, the Dubai-based satellite network MBC has dubbed into Arabic 30 episodes of The Simpsons and is showing them twice a day. MBC, which has heavily promoted the series, signed up several of the most popular Egyptian actors - including Mohammed Heneidi and Hanan Turk - to provide new voices for the characters.

The decision to have them speak in Egyptian dialect is unusual, according to Lindsay Wise of the Adham Centre for Television Journalism at the American University in Cairo. "Dubbed foreign cartoons tend to be put into classical Arabic for educational purposes. This is much more casual," she said.

Perhaps the challenge of rendering expressions such as "doh!" and "scrumdidiliumptious" into the formal classical tongue proved just too daunting.

Unlike most cartoons on Arab TV, MBC is not aiming the satirical Simpsons at children. If the experiment proves successful, the series "will form the backbone of the network's attempt to create a new category of adult cartoons", it said in a press statement.

So far though, some viewers are sceptical about the series. "I watched a promo segment and it was just painful," a blogger known as The Angry Arab wrote. "They were so unfunny and so annoying, those Arab actors ... the guy who played Homer was one of the most unfunny people I ever watched. Just drop the project."