I just saw "The Simpsons" in Costa Rica. It's being shown in dubbed and subtitled versions (fairly common here). I thought it was funny! I wonder, however, how well the non-Americans in the audience understood the humor of Schwarzenegger as US President, the Pakistani from the convenience store, the jokes about Alaska, etc.
In addition to humor linked to culture and life in general in the country where a story takes place, obviously a lot of humor is linked to puns, plays on words. Many years ago in Puebla I went to see a Pink Panther movie with a Nicaraguan who speaks excellent English and has lived most of his life in the US. The film was subtitled. We were laughing our heads off at the humor in spoken English, but it simply didn't translate well into Spanish. The rest of the audience probably thought we were nuts. In the film "McCabe and Mrs. Miller", I remember a joke with a great punchline, but it was a play on words and in the Spanish translation it was just another story.
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