Quote:
Originally Posted by issybird
I do know that's how it's supposed to work. I'm talking about major books, reputable publishers and so forth and I still find that quality control frequently leaves a lot to be desired. Some books much more so than others; many books have the polish you'd expect, but the exceptions are not few, alas.
There are two types of errors I find unforgivable: mispronouncing ordinary words and mispronouncing proper nouns which are clearly tricky. Find out! The most understandable is when the proper noun has an aberrant pronunciation that isn't obvious. Two I've run across are Lady Mary Coke and Elbridge Gerry.
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I understand what you are saying, but I also know how difficult it is to know the pronunciation of even fairly common words. I'm college educated and I read voraciously, which means I'm exposed to a large vocabulary--of SILENT words. My husband STILL finds words--these are not necessarily rare words--that I mispronounced. Cavalry was one. I've heard it wrong more than right and so I read it wrong. There's other words that I just never hear (I don't watch TV and when I do, it's sports without the sound turned on). So I tend to pronounce phonetically. French words in particular give me a very hard time. I had a devil of a time saying "Snitched, Snatched" without garbling it. (Never will I name a story anything like that again! The two s words together were like one big slurring for me.)
It's not to say we don't need to practice and look things up, but in at least 3 cases, I THOUGHT I was saying the words right. It isn't that I was unsure, it was simply that I'd read them enough and thought I knew. Some people also have a better ear/learning for languages (my husband being one) so he catches things on a listen. I'm sure that the pros have various levels of "listeners" who have varying degrees of education. My attention tends to wander when listening to things so I'm not a good "proof reader" for listening. I'm guessing the pros don't always luck out and get good listeners for the audio and it's far too expensive to re-record something that has already been released and engineered because of three or six words that are wrong. If there comes a time when it's less expensive to do recordings (or redo them) I think the quality will go up. But as it is, I think we'll actually see the quality go down as more outfits get into doing it on a budget.
I've followed various indie threads and they have had some horrible recordings turned in as finished. If done through Amazon, the LEAST the author can get away with paying is for half of it (because once you agree to the initial 15-30 minute sample, you are out half the money regardless of the rest of the recording). So as this growth continues, the quality level is going to increase in some areas (where people get innovative and use different voice actors in a single book or add sound effects, etc) and it's going to decrease in others (where the hiring field gets larger and the talent varies. Just like with artists and cover work--there is more work to go around, but that doesn't mean every artist hired can do the genre or has the talent to complete a cover in a timely and professional manner.)
Those who have a good ear will suffer the most from mispronunciations!
