(27b) Production Notes

Having a distinct voice for Neville kinda ruins the surprise that it’s Neville standing up to the bullies at first and not Harry, as in the text he isn’t identified right away. But I didn’t really see any way out of that. It’s a detail that is unfortunately unavoidably lost in translation.

It’s also a bit odd when different people pronounce proper nouns in different ways. That may be avoidable, but it’s harder to do when contributors are spread around the country/world and you can’t coordinate in real time. It’s probably not a big deal, since people do pronounce names in a variety of ways in real life – as the owner of a very unusual name myself I’m used to several variations on “Eneasz”. I’ve never had the Data/Data problem. But it feels weird in story form, since the Narrator is supposedly the Voice of God and the characters aren’t supposed to diverge from him. Right? /shrug

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2 Comments

  1. Different people pronouncing names differently has always bothered me in the Star Wars movies. Even in the original trilogy there are several instances (“Layah” vs. “Leeah”, “Han” vs. “Hahn”, etc). I just chalk this stuff up to George not caring.

    I can’t think of many other instances of this problem in popular fiction, and I am actually ok with it in this podcast.

  2. Maybe converting the direct speech into indirect speech (which is narrated by the narrator (voice)) might constitute a way out of the voice identification problem.

    The pronunciation differences have not occurred to me; I would not say that the characters’ pronunciation is not allowed to diverge from the narrator – on the contrary: I think it could give them more unique personality.

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