Favorite voice actors in the dubs

[Lance.Uppercut]

You may agree that one should always approach a piece of literature or media in its original language, if you can. I'd say that's more or less true, but there are some pretty nicely-crafted dubs of The Simpsons out there, and many of them change things to adapt them to the new audience. However, the English voice actors don't speak the other languages, so they'll hire native speakers in the respective countries to take over the roles of our favorite characters. Do you have any favorite dubbers? Mine would be:

Quebec Homer (Hubert Gagnon); his vocal range is impressive, and his emoting can come off better than the original at times. His voice for Grampa is also good.
Latin American Homer (Humberto Vélez & his successor); sounds next to nothing like the original, but Velez's interpretation of Homero is just hilarious to listen to - a truly comedic performance. His successor sounds exactly like the original voice actor (or at least I can't tell them apart).
Parisian Homer (Philippe Peythieu); his Homer voice is spot-on and sounds as close to the original as I can find. He carries himself well in interviews, seems to be a nice guy all-around and is married to Parisian Marge; they met while dubbing the show together.
German Kent Brockman (Donald Arthur); this former opera singer is a New York native and also played Chef on the German dub of South Park. His bass voice makes for an excellent newscaster, and I prefer it over Harry Shearer's original.
German Marge (Elisabeth Volkmann); she played Marge until her death in 2006. Most voices for Marge keep the rasipiness of the Julie Kavner original, but Volkmann stuck more to her original speaking voice, which I think allowed her to emote a little better at times. Anke Engelke has since taken over the role since Volkmann's death, and her interpretation is closer to the original, but I prefer Volkmann over Engelke for her excellent delivery.
Arabic Bart (I can't find the voice actress's name) and Italian Bart (Iliara Stagni); both exemplify Bart's trouble-making nature and seem to best encapsulate the original (I mean mostly in the intonation of the voice, not necessarily in light of the huge changes in the script in the Arabic adaptation)

Granted, there are some I haven't heard, or haven't heard enough of: Korean, Icelandic, Catalan, Ukranian, Flemish - and some aren't even produced any more. Some dubs I believe exist but can't find evidence of, like Gaelic. Others either just have the movie dubbed or that one Renault Kangoo commercial featuring the family (Croatian).

Do you have any favorites?

[GwonamAlmighty]

I also like german Homer (Norbert Gastell)
Don't like german Sideshow Bob\Tingeltangel Bob

[Lance.Uppercut]

I think Norbert Gastell has a great fan following; he's been in the biz for a long time and has appeared on many German programs and dubs. He did an appearance or two on the sci-fi classic Raumschiff Orion and has appeared on the dubs of South Park, Bonkers and the Harry Potter movies. I'm just afraid he won't make it until the end of the show; he's voicing a character in his late-thirties, early-forties, but Gastell is well into his eighties. He also voiced Herb Powell, which is appropriate.

As far as Tingeltangel Bob is concerned, he's had a few major voice actors. His first was actually the same dubber for Frasier back in the day, which was entirely fitting. This was for S1-S3. The show then transferred over to Pro7 and Ivar Combrinck took over the voice of Tingeltangel Bob (S5-S17) and several others, as well as the translation and voice direction of the show. His performance is okay, I suppose, but it could be really annoying. He wasn't as good a voice actor or singer as he thought he was. He played Bob, Sideshow Mel, Frink, Frank Grimes, Raphael, Zapp Brannigan, Quagmire, Tom Tucker and countless others.

That's all over now; I think the new voice of Bob (Christian Tramitz, S19 and on, minus The Simpsons Game) - the fourth voice, I think - is okay. As the characters point out in "The Bob Next Door", the dubber also played Ken in Toy Story 3 and Bolt in that CGI superhero dog flick. Still not as good as the original. The only one who comes close to sounding like Kelsey Grammer would have to be the first dubber (Randolf Kronberg), but it's a weak comparison at best.

[Prune Tracy]

I know it's a little off-topic, but now that you've mentioned German Sideshow Bob, how do they do the "Die, Bart, Die" joke in Germany?

[Flimpson Tide]

As the characters point out in "The Bob Next Door", the dubber also played Ken in Toy Story 3 and Bolt in that CGI superhero dog flick.

Ha, so they wrote in a joke about how Sideshow Bob sounds like Bolt and Ken? Those carazay dubbers.

[Lance.Uppercut]

No, no. Remember in "The Bob Next Door"? Bart's scared because Walt Warren looks and sounds like Sideshow Bob. His parents try to comfort him:

Marge: Sideshow Bob sounds like a lot of people! Like Frasier!
Homer: And Stinky Pete, from Toy Story 2!

They point out that Sideshow Bob "sounds" like these characters because Kelsey Grammer played them both. They try to tell Bart it's just a coincidence.
But, in the German dub, this would be lost; Kelsey Grammer doesn't speak German, and the voiceover for Sideshow Bob in the German dub is Christian Tramitz. So, in the German dub, they rewrote the dialog.

Marge (in German): Sideshow Bob sounds like a lot of people, like Ken from Toy Story 3!
Homer (in German): And Bolt from that movie about the dog superhero!

Christian Tramitz played those characters in the German dub, so that's why Sideshow Bob "sounds" like them. Tramitz os often the dubbed voice for John Travolta, et al.

[Lance.Uppercut]

Also, regarding the "Die, Bart, Die" joke in the German dub, well, they salvaged it the best they could. In the English version, from Cape Feare:

Lawyer: What about that tattoo on your chest? Doesn't it say, "Die, Bart, Die"?
Bob: No, that's German for "the Bart, the".
The crowd is alleviated. We hear a woman say, "No one who speaks German can be an evil man."

The problem here is that it's stilted German, just like the title of "Burns Verkaufen der Kraftwerk". It's "faux-German", that is to say it's grammatically incorrect. "Die" is indeed an article in German and means "the", but it's reserved for feminine nouns. Bart, on the other hand, would be referred to as "der Bart, der", because Bart is male.

In the dub:

Lawyer: Was ist mit der Tätowierung auf Ihrer Brust? Steht da nicht "Stirb, Bart, stirb"? ("What's with the tattoo on your chest? Doesn't it say, 'die, Bart, die'?") Die is used here as in "perish".
The line is translated word for word: Die Bart die, as in perish. Note that the lawyer addresses Bob with the formal "you".

Bob: Nein, das ist Deutsch und heißt --- hier: "Die Bart, die".
Again, the line is translated word for word, with "die" pronounced like the article "the". This is even with Bart being called feminine. What I guess is happening here is that Bob is correcting the lawyer for meaning of the word "die", whether it's referring to the English word for "perish" or the German word for "the"; they're spelled the same way. I think many German viewers would know enough English to understand the pun. I couldn't think of a more effective way to translate the joke unless they awkwardly changed the animation, included a subtitle or had Bob speak against what was written on his chest.

The crowd is alleviated. We hear a woman say, "Jemand, der Deutsch spricht, kann kein schlechter Mensch sein." ("Someone who speaks German can't be a bad person." )

These jokes can be especially hard to translate. Ivar Combrinck, here the translator of the German dub and the voice of Sideshow Bob, has often come under fire for his lack of understanding of American pop culture and therefore shoddy translation quality, but I can't really blame him here.

[simpsonsbart]

Hum... Philippe Peythieu has an incredible talent. He doesn't only dub Homer and Abe, he also dubs Otto!

And Gilbert Levy (a.k.a French Moe Szyslak) is an amazing dubber: Databse is voiced by him. And Moe has a beautiful voice.

[Dobbie]

It's been a while since I watched the Simpsons in Quebec French, but I didn't particulary like it back then.

[zartok-35]

Any idea who is doing the voice here? The excellent screaming leaves an impression.

[simpsonsbart]

If only you hear Homer's Parisian voice, she is very bitch and very retarded. It fits perfectly on the character, because he is like this.

[Dobbie]

So a woman voices Homer? That's interesting.

[simpsonsbart]

It's a man: he's voiced by Phillipe Peythieu.

[Lance.Uppercut]

Any idea who is doing the voice here? The excellent screaming leaves an impression.

That clip's from the Castellano Spanish dub (the one done in Spain). That's Carlos Ysbert playing Homer. He just started playing Homer in Season 11 after the untimely passing of the previous voice actor, Carlos Revilla.

[Lance.Uppercut]

If only you hear Homer's Parisian voice, she is very bitch and very retarded. It fits perfectly on the character, because he is like this.

Perhaps what simpsonsbart meant by "she" is that the word "voice" in French could be feminine, "voix". We call "voice" a neuter noun (as in, "That's Joe's voice. It's very deep."), whereas in French, it's a feminine noun (as in, "That's Joe's voice. She [referring to the voice] is very deep.") Homer's not voiced by a woman in any dubs I've heard, but Marge is voiced by a man in the Czech dub, and Bart is occasionally voiced by a man as well, depending on the dub.