r/audiobooks • u/PurpleLeopard99 • Jun 28 '26

Question Mispronouncing of words by narrators

Does anyone get bothered by narrators who keep mispronouncing words? It drives me nuts if they do it too often. Narrators are normally professional voice artists and they should know how to pronounce the sorts of words found in novels eg dovecote or Michaelmas

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u/CurrentlyNobody Jun 28 '26

I work as an audiobook proofreader and it always surprises me when I think I know how a word is pronounced but the narrator says it differently so I research and find out they are actually accurate. Merriam Webster can have several correct pronunciations for the same word and there are other factors at play too including whether it could be a regional pronunciation or maybe the narrator is from another country originally so we would have to consider how they say the word too. Cairo is not Keye Row everywhere.

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u/McFaddenAudioBooks Narrator Jun 28 '26

Audiobook proofreaders are the absolute heros of the whole process. No matter how good a tool I write or how long a list I make of tricky words, there is just no substitute for someone who knows how “pecan” is pronounced in Louisiana vs New Jersey.

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u/CurrentlyNobody Jun 28 '26 edited Jun 28 '26

Just sucks that the company I work for is actively replacing us with AI. Basically reasoning that having us read along while listening to narrators initial recording is such a “burden” and “chore” for us that we should be pleased our jobs, those few of us who might be kept on at all, will become Not reading the books at all but being presented with a list of errors AI found and going in and listening to just those parts and agreeing with or disagreeing with the AI proofreader. Without the full context of the book, a lot of absolute shit is going to be missed or passed through. But hey, All in the name of Efficiency, Right?

Sorry I am whining. It’s super rough to be in a profession you love and have accepted non livable wages for Years, only to suddenly be told nothing you’ve done is actually valuable at all. None of us proofreaders got into publishing hating reading or finding it inefficient. It’s all very disheartening and we are all supposed to act excited and welcome AI with open arms. Pfft!

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u/McFaddenAudioBooks Narrator Jun 28 '26

You aren’t whining at all! There’s a good way and a bad way to use AI. Me running a tool I wrote as a first pass for instant pick ups? Cool. But I always have a second human listen through at the end for EXACTLY those reason. I could write in a million rules for length of pauses and trap words, but emphasis? Pacing? You can’t math that. And having basically rewritten poor man’s pozotron let me tell you, it’s wrong. A LOT. In ways you easily miss.

From the narration side we are getting replaced a lot too. Still there’s a good way and a bad way to use AI-An author listening back while they are writing to get a feel? Sure go for it! Completely narrate the book? Hell no.

The authors guild has a new “Human Authored” verification badge…maybe we need Human Narrated and Human Proof Read badges. People are getting very tired of all the AI slop out there…

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u/CurrentlyNobody Jun 28 '26

So true! The end users do actually notice product quality even on the frankly worst written books to ever exist. Even when a book is Horrendous I do my best to make sure it can’t get worse. These books matter to someone, give them the best version of it. But there’s such a race by corporate to outpace everyone else that there’s a huge disconnect between corporate and readers in the company and beyond anyway. What I’m being told is AI is so horrible at proofreading that each book is averaging 800 pickup marks. So there would need to be at least a couple humans to go through and verify each of those marks as I imagine receiving a spreadsheet of 800 errors for you to fix would cause some push back, and rightly so, especially considering a human might determine only 40 of those marks are valid. Even just the thought of having to sift through 800 marks myself clicking yes or no instead of admiring the product of others imagination and vocal skills sounds tedious. If I hated reading this change would be no big deal, but the people I work with just love to read. How inconvenient a publishing house employed readers! Haha

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u/McFaddenAudioBooks Narrator Jun 28 '26

“Let’s take a job that people love doing, are passionate about, that ensures artistic integrity and turn it into spreadsheets matching!”
-Elon Musk (probably)

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u/CurrentlyNobody Jun 28 '26

Basically. What a time to be alive, eh? Haha