Bugbears in audiobooks

[C8H10N4O2]

Inspired by this thread:
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/what_were_reading/5041058-inaccuracies-in-fiction

It made me think about my additional bugbears in audiobooks and wondering just how much "proof listening" publishers undertake and how much prep for is done for narrators in terms of pronunciation/accent. In no particular order:

• accents wackering around - character is Scots and has an accent starting in Edinburgh, veering to Glasgow via Belfast and Dublin. See also Somerset character who spends half of every sentence in Dudley and the New Yorker who does the vocal hop across to the West Coast mid speech.
• Novelty "furrin" accents (which may also go on geographic tours, I just wouldn't detect them as easily)
• Place names or famous names mispronounced. It is surely not beyond the publishers to make sure narrators have pronunciation guides for places such as "Woolwich".
• The same common word pronounced several different ways by the narrator in the book as if they don't know or remember the actual word
• Common words pronounced as by an untrained text-to-speech device. eg "shone" read as "shown" when its not part of a regional accent or dialect.

They bug me because they distract and break the suspense of the story - much as factual inaccuracies, it helps break the credibility of the plot.

It doesn't seem to be a "small name" vs "big name" author or particular publichsers - just random which makes me think the narrators are not given much of a briefing. This makes it more difficult to avoid the bad examples (although there are some narrators I'd listen to reading my shopping list, its harder to identify the consistently bad)

It drives me batty in audiobooks when conversation is read without natural contractions, eg did not instead of didn't. I know it's written like that, but I can glaze over it if I'm reading, it's so stilted and unnatural when read aloud.

Also, male narrators who think all women speak in the same high, feathery voice. Ugh.

Playing devil's advocate here but sometimes that works really well. In the film "The Death of Stalin," regional UK accents are used instead of regional Russian accents (which would all sound much the same to me!)

Also not the reader's fault of course, but it bothers me so much when English books, about English characters, set in England and written by an English author have 'cell phones', 'sneakers', 'zits' etc swapped in for the sake of an American audience. If they really can't work out what 'pavements', 'mobiles' or 'flats' are (and I would have thought they'd be able to pretty quickly just using common sense!) why can't they just Google?

I hate that too. My most glaring example was a story by a British author, set in England, where a born & bred Cumbrian asks someone if they remembered to turn the faucet off.

Also when a reader gets mixed up & reads a line in the wrong voice, so it sounds as if another character is saying it - I can see that would be very easily missed, but it’s irritating!

Accents going all over the place definitely ! I have a couple of series of audiobooks which I like with the same narrator but sometimes it's like they didn't listen back to how they'd done the character in the last book. I had to abandon a book where accents went everywhere in the same book as I couldn't follow who was who.

OTT to the point of comedy accents generally, especially foreign accents but also some UK accents like Scouse or West County.

Also mispronouncing words or place names. Surely there is some sort of editor / proof "listener ?" to pick up these things ? I like Martin Edwards' crime novels; one book has a part of the story set near where I live and every place name was pronounced incorrectly - it drove me mad. It would take a minute to Google !

I agree - this is a valid approach, if it’s done well.

I have issues with inaccurate pronunciation, especially in historical fiction, or any non-fiction. I don’t mind sporadic weirdness or odd words that sound unnatural, but persistent ignorance of how it’s supposed to be said is a black list situation.

I also don’t want to hear them sucking through their teeth or making unpleasant sounds, even if that is an attempt at characterisation. It sets my teeth on edge.

Not audiobook specific but using the wrong kind of words or slang for the setting annoys me in books.

I was told once, but can't remember, the term for using character names that fit for now but not for the character's background. Like a guy born in Manchester in the 70s being called Arlo rather than... Andy or Steve.

When the narrator in a series changes and pronounces words/names completely differently. Would you now listen to some of the previous book to check?!

Particularly if it's a fantasy type story with made up words.

And names - I listened to one where a main character was Mhairi. AFAIK that's actually pronounced something like Varry being Scottish, but the narrator used M'hairy the whole way through. Grrr. Maybe someone Scottish can confirm!

It took me far too long to work out why someone in a (non-fiction) work used to record conversations in a tiny book...

....it was a "minute book" and the narrator chose the wrong pronunciation!!

The Jackson Brodie books are so annoying because Jason Isaacs does some wonderfully but they switch to random other narrators and use him only for the abridged ones. Very irritating there is no consistency across them.

I think narrators often give each character their own 'peculiarities' - like an accent or way of pronouncing words so that it's easy for the listening to know who's speaking. In a book you can go back a couple of lines if you lose track of who's meant to be talking, but you can't do that in an audio book.I love Stephen Fry's narration of the Harry Potter books because you can tell who is speaking by the way he talks.He doesn't do a high pitched 'girlie' voice for Hermione, but just a small tweak in enunciation and you know it's her.

But I HATE mispronunciations and characters given accents that are impossible - you have a character that you find out is from Bristol and she's narrated with a Yorkshire accent, that kind of thing.

@MoralOrLegal

But Death Of Stalin was intentionally a comedy not one of the Russian greats!

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit Point taken! But still... if the Russian original has one character speaking in a rural dialect and another as urban elite, picking English accents that match those is surely OK? I think I might be overthinking though!

Have a listen if you want to see how it works, it was read by Will Poulter.

Stephen Fry pronouncing Holyhead as in holy not Holly in Harry Potter. Drives me batty every time and my children listen to it a lot!

Mixtures of good and bad narrators for the same book series is my biggest one. I want to listen to all the Falco roman books (Lindsey Davis) and some are narrated by Christian Rodska, who is brilliant, and others by Gordon Griffin, who is terrible. Pretty much the only book series where I had to stop because the narrator was so dull and awful. I’ve got used to other voices on other series, though I’d rather they stick to the same one, but this bad narrator basically means I can’t listen to them. Grr.

Someone earlier mentioned feeding back direct to the publisher - would they not just look at audible reviews? And if not, frankly, it’s completely lame. It must be by far the biggest audiobook feedback resource. I wouldn’t know how to contact the publisher.

They often read too bloody slowly!! I obviously don’t want them to rush through it, but it can often feel massively slowed down. Pick up the pace! Lol
i know I can up the speed but it’s not the same!