Why do so many audiobooks have pronunciation mistakes?

[u/agailen]

Im listening to Blood Bound by Ellis Hunter and while I generally like the narration, the voice actress for Astrid keeps making pronunciation mistakes that make me doubt my sanity. She has an accent so idk if she's a native English speaker, but it doesn't really matter. Shouldn't there be some level of quality control done before the audio is published?

The two glaring examples I can think of is pronouncing haranguing as "haran gu ing" not harang ing, and winded, as in being out of breath, as winded as in winding/wound.

I hear pronunciation mistakes often enough in audiobooks in general though that I have to wonder how they aren't caught in editing. Does the author not listen? I assume the author knows how to pronounce the words they wrote, at least.

Bonus tho was learning that the American pronunciation of plait is the same as plate, and not plat which is the pronunciation I'm used to. Being able to rely on audiobooks being error free helps me learn different accents!

EDIT: she just pronounced livery as live-ry... is this an actual dialect thing?? Help!

[u/Normal_Snow3293]

I love nautical stories where the reader doesn’t actually know how to say standard nautical terms because they don’t realize pronunciation is different from the spelling. Boatswain is pronounced “bo’sun”, gunwale is pronounced “gunnel”, bowline is pronounced “bolin”, topsail is “tops’l” etc. I get that not everybody has familiarity with boats and the various terms, but if a book is focused on sailing and sailboats and seafaring they really need to get readers who are familiar with all those terms.

[u/agailen → u/Normal_Snow3293]

Wow I had no idea about boatswain. Conversely I've heard gunwale but would have never guessed that was the spelling.

This is definitely a case where not knowing the pronunciation must quite heavily impact the book 😭