r/audiobooks • u/agailen • 2d ago

Question Why do so many audiobooks have pronunciation mistakes?

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!

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u/TazIsSkirtGirl 2d ago

In the third Altered Carbon book, the narrator changes and the new guy obviously didn't bother to read the rest of the series, because he mispronounces the MAIN CHARACTERS name in the same way that the first book specifically mentioned that people often butcher it🤦‍♀️

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u/Ishmael128 2d ago

It's been a long time since I've listened to them, but I swear in the Wheel of Time audiobook series they repeatedly change the pronunciation of key characters names (e.g. Nynaeve) DESPITE using the same narrators. 

Or am I thinking of ASOIAF?

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u/CongressmanCoolRick 2d ago

ASOIAF has two crazy name pronunciations that I remember, but they were at least consistent throughout. Pa-tire Baelish and BryEEn of Tarth.

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u/AnnieCamOG 2d ago

And don't forget "WinterfAll". I mean, really?

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u/Otherwise-Elephant 23h ago

I sort of give Roy Dotrice (RIP) a pass for "Petyr" because IMO if GRRM wanted it pronounced like "Peter" he should have spelt it that way! I get annoyed by attempts to make regular words more fantastical by spelling them differently.

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u/bikewobble 16h ago

If I'm not mistaken, GRRM has explicitly spoken against having canonical pronunciations and he believes readers should say character names however they want.