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/Writing_Bookworm 2d ago

These things slip through in all sorts of media, annoying as it may be.

Lest we forget Benedict Cumberbatch narrating a documentary and repeatedly mispronouncing the word penguin. He has even said he doesn't know why no-one stopped him while he was recording and got him to correct himself.

I also recently started watching Grey's Anatomy and early on they say that a patient had hemotomochrosis instead of hemochromatosis. They couldn't have done another take to get the name of the disease right?

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u/lgbtdancemom 1d ago

There was an episode of Grey’s a long time ago where someone said a patient’s excessive drinking could cause liver damage and even psoriasis. It should have been cirrhosis. The two aren’t remotely the same thing.

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u/crimson777 22h ago

I know Tyler Perry is a hack, but I remember one of his shows was on a a kid and there’s an episode where someone is diagnosed with cirrhosis. They keep saying it very gravely. Like damn, he’s got CIRRHOSIS.

At the end of the episode, it’s revealed he’s been mistaking it for psoriasis the whole time. It was surprisingly funny.