Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
I encountered one horrendous example of that recently, in a Librivox recording of the Jules Verne book "The Castaways". Now admittedly, these are not professional narrators, but three different narrators of the book mispronounced the word "Maori" (ie the indigenous people of New Zealand) as "Ma-orry", and I just don't see any excuse for that. Surely it's just everyday general knowledge to know how that word is pronounced, isn't it?
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Yes, it is! Or so I would have thought.
I class mispronunciations in three categories. The first is when a common English word is mispronounced and that's inexcusable. Not only am I shocked that the reader doesn't know the word, I think errors of this kind should be caught somewhere in the editing/production process and fixed; other people are listening, don't any of them have more than a rudimentary vocabulary? In any case, a professional should find out the pronunciation of a word with which he's unfamiliar, instead of just taking a stab at it.
The second is in the Maori category. It's understand that some proper nouns are unfamiliar (although not this one). But unfamiliar proper nouns should be identified in advance and the pronunciation discovered. People are being paid to get it right, not close.
The third is the toughest; a proper noun where it's not obvious that the pronunciation is not what you'd expect. I recently finished listening to
Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire read by the thoroughly professional Nadia May. One of the recurring personages in the book was Lady Mary Coke. As I happen to know, her last name is pronounced "Cook," not Coke. Unfortunately, that's the kind of mistake it's hard to guard against, since if you don't know, you'd not suspect. Just the same, I winced every time Nadia May said "Coke."