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VOICE ACTING Dear Audiobook Listener: Don't Feel Badly. Narrators Have To Look Up Pronunciations Of Those Unfamiliar, Odd-Sounding Words. (Here's How) August 28, 2018  Note: The author is a long-time and award-winning audiobook narrator who in a recent blog directed to her listening fans explained how thoroughly narrators research a book before opening the mic. We reprint it with permission here, because it indirectly gives narrators excellent advice on how to learn word pronunciations ...By Ann Richardson Voice Actor & Audiobook Narrator You're listening to an audiobook and the narrator smoothly and
confidently rattles off a word that's quite lengthy, unfamiliar, and
odd-sounding. You're flummoxed, discombobulated, and you marvel at the
reader's elocution. To be honest, the author's generous sprinkling of
such large words seems pedantic to you at times, but secretly you're
wondering if you're just under-educated. Well, don't feel badly.
Although overwhelmingly narrators are very well-read and possess a
larger-than-normal vocabulary, many of them still look up the
pronunciation of words that, at first glance, would seem simple in their
pronunciation. KNOWING OUR LIMITATIONS Good narrators recognize that geography, demographics, and even
economic status can play a large role in how certain words are
pronounced. I narrated a book about food in which the word "grocery"
was used liberally. I'm from the near center of the United States, and
we've always said "grow shree", but I was fully aware that other parts
of the county pronounce it "grow sir ee". I had to email the producer
and ask what they preferred. Another example: In most parts of the
country, cowboys and cowgirls participate in an event involving skill at
riding horses and bulls. This is called a "ROE-dee-OH", unless you're in
Salinas, CA, where it's called a "roe DAY oh". Or, if I'm
narrating a book set in New York, and the street "Houston" appears, I
know (only because I've been there) that it's pronounced "house-tun; but
before I'd visited New York I would have automatically pronounced it
"hyoos-tun". BOOK PREPPERS – INVALUABLE RESOURCE These pitfalls are a major part of why many narrators hire
professional book preppers. A professional book prepper charges around
$25 per hour to read through a book, note unusual words and proper
nouns, look up the pronunciation, and create a spreadsheet for the
narrator to use for reference. Preppers may also take notes on the
characters in the book, listing anything mentioned in the text that
could help a narrator form a voice for that person. For example, did the
character grow up in a Southern state? Does he/she have a lisp? Speak
rapidly? Stutter? In addition, the prepper may give notes summarizing
the arc of the story, chapter by chapter. All of these help a narrator
visualize the performance. PLUS ONLINE RESOURCES But what if a narrator cannot hire a prepper and must do the research
him/herself? When this happens to me, I pre-read the book and create a
spreadsheet of words for which I must look up pronunciations. Often, if
I'm narrating for a large publisher, I receive instructions on which
sites to use when researching, and in what order of preference.
Otherwise, I search sites such
as Forvo, Howjsay, YouTube, YouGlish, Hearnames, and pronounce.voanews. I
make sure to find several different sites' pronunciations, because
there are variations among the sites, especially YouTube, and go with
the pronunciation that's used most often. Another amazing resource to use when narrating a book with foreign
language throughout, is AudioEloquence. This is a language, dialect,
and accent research website maintained by my fellow narrators and
all-around swell women, Judith West and Heather Henderson, specifically
for audiobook narrators. This site is not a pronunciation site per se,
but rather a listing of websites that focus on specific languages. For
example, say you're narrating a book on the Inuit tribes and you visit
Audio Eloquence. You scroll down to "PRONUNCIATION SITES BY LANGUAGE"
and look for Native American languages, then, logically, Inuit
resources. You see this link: Inuktitut Tusaalanga: Glossary, follow it, and BINGO! You've found everything you need in order to
speak their words as if you just came off the ice flow with a sled-full
of whale blubber for your winter food supply. SEARCH SERVICE ... Now the last super-resource for narrators is relatively new. It's pronounceology.com. Brainchild of accomplished narrator, Adam
Verner, it is a subscription service that does all of the work for a
narrator with a long list of words to research. Here's an excerpt from
the site:
And CALL AROUND Let's say you've been trying mightily for hours to find a
pronunciation of a proper noun online, to no avail. You've posted your
problem word in the Facebook narrators groups, begging for help, but
it's in the wee hours of the morning and no one is replying. (We narrators are prone to working into the night because:
it's quieter than midday, when the leaf-blowers, UPS trucks, kids, circling airplanes and solicitors are out in full force, it's cooler in the summer hours, when we sit, sweating in our hot-boxes narrating, and/or we've over-committed to too many narration projects and our deadlines are impossibly short).
Picking up the phone and calling around is usually fruitful. Bars,
ethnic restaurants, libraries, embassies, airlines, and city and county
non-emergency phone centers are very helpful places to phone to hear how
a local pronounces things. Even if the business or office is closed,
chances are the voicemail greeting will be helpful, especially if one is
calling to hear the pronunciation of someone's name. ABOUT THOSE NAMES ... And about pronouncing a person's name: YouTube has wonderful
resources, and the most beneficial I've found have been recorded
interviews, where the speaker is introduced. I specifically stay away
from TED talks, because almost as a rule they never
include speaker introductions! And besides that, I always get sucked
into watching a couple of them while I'm at it; they're fascinating, and
before I know it I've lost an hour of productive recording time. ASK FACEBOOK FRIENDS If a narrator is still unable to find the pronunciation needed by
searching online, it's time to get creative. Facebook has been a
wonderful resource for many narrators, and it's not uncommon to see a
post in one of the various narrator forums that goes like this:
And then half a dozen
narrators will comment, usually with something facetious and irreverent,
but more often than not, someone will have a solid answer. Here's an example of a recent plea for help in one of the narrator groups (all names have been deleted for privacy):
I never followed up to see if the OP got her answer, but I'll bet she did.
WE ARE HUMAN Now, with all these research methods and resources, let me be
perfectly clear: narrators are humans, and we do make mistakes. Sometimes the issue is not us; publishers, editors, or directors may
want us to pronounce something differently than we have learned it, and
even when we gently assert that we've got proof that it's pronounced
"our" way, in the end it's not our decision. (Don't get me wrong,
although we may differ on pronunciations occasionally, these demigods
save our bacon innumerable times per project and we LOVE THEM!) We also
have that blind spot; remember my example from earlier? Houston St. in
New York is pronounced "House tun" and not "Hyoos tun". LISTENERS, PLEASE BE KIND So, dear audiobook listener, we love you, and hopefully this blog has
shed some light on the behind-the-scenes production of an audiobook. But please remember when you're writing your review and you're about to
lambast us for pronouncing Kearney, NE as "kern ee" instead of
"karn ee", that we may have never been to Kearney and did not know it
was a tricky pronunciation, or maybe we were told by the director to
pronounce it "kern ee" despite our protest and subsequently losing the
arm wrestling match we suggested to settle the deal. Or… maybe it's you.
Have you ever found out, late in life, that you've been pronouncing
something wrong the whole time? It happens. Please be kind.
It's hard work, pronouncing all that stuff. ------------------ ABOUT ANN Ann Richardson has
been narrating for major publishers as well as independently published authors
since 2008. She has been awarded AudioFile Magazine's Earphones Awards, as well
as having been a finalist in the Voice Arts Awards in 2016 and 2017. In her
spare time Ann is a volunteer narrator for Learning Ally (formerly Recording
For the Blind and Dyslexic), and from time to time speaks to author groups and
at writers' conferences about the process of making an audiobook. Email: ann@annmrichardson.com |
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Almost every gig I would be on the phone to the town's library, post office or pub - and always people were glad to be asked. I recall one occasion when my publisher queried my rendition of an Oxfordshire name and I was able to say I had obtained my guidance from the world-famous Bodleian Library. 'Hmphhh' he said. 'S'pose it must be right, then'.