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| Roman Centurion |
Something is bugging me and I would like your opinion.
I have been listening to an audiobook of a novel by an American author. It is set in Italy, the characters are Italian, and they speak, you'll never guess, Italian.
Which is fine. But when there is dialog the actor doing the narration gives the characters Italian accents.
And that's what bugs me. They are speaking in their own language. Why do they have accents?
That would make sense if there were people speaking two languages. Think of all those World War II movies where the Americans speak English with good 'ol midwestern, southern, or New York accents, but when we switch to German soldiers talking to each other we know they are speaking in German because of their Deutschland accents.
But if all the characters are supposed to be speaking German then, says me, they shouldn't have accents. What do you think?
I mentioned this to someone and she suggested this could be seen as mocking the (in this case) Italians. I'm sure that was not the intention of the narrator.
Slightly off topic: as far as I know George Lucas was the first director to decide, in the original Star Wars movie, that American actors would speak with American accents and the Brits would talk British. Heck, they were all in a different galaxy, anyway. And then Star Trek decided that a Frenchman named Jean-Luc Picard could speak like a Shakespearean actor. Why not?
And sticking to the United Kingdom for a minute, twenty-five or so years ago there was a Britcom called Coupling. In one episode a character is trying to chat up a beautiful Israeli woman but she only speaks Hebrew. We see their entire conversation... and then we see the same event from her point of view, so in that version she appears to be the only one speaking English. The entire thing is hilarious but all I can find to show you is this little clip in which our hero thinks he has learned her name, but actually he suffers an unfortunate misunderstanding.*
Back to our main topic: Should those Italians be speaking with Italian accents? Whatcha think?
* If you have access to the Roku channel you can watch Coupling for free. The scene I am describing starts around minute 17 of an episode called "The Girl With Two Breasts." Hey, they also have one called "The Man With Two Legs."
Whether someone has an accent--or seems to have one--would vary by listener, wouldn't it? An Italian person listening to the book wouldn't think the characters have Italian accents. That person likely wouldn't notice because the characters would be talking the way the listener talks.
ReplyDeleteSorry. I hit the publish button before I finished. An Italian listening to the book would notice the American accent of the narrator when he or she is doing exposition or narration. Similarly, I would think, Rob, that you wouldn't notice someone with a Washington state accent (whatever that is) but you would notice someone with a southern accent. Whereas a southerner wouldn't notice a southern accent, but would notice a Washington state accent. This is a long way of saying that I don't think what this reader did is odd, even if you don't like it. I wouldn't have a problem with a narrator making the character sound the way are supposed to sound. If it was a character from my neck of the woods, I likely wouldn't notice the accent, whereas you would.
DeleteInteresting! Thanks.
DeleteGood point, Barb. I remember when "Fargo" came out and everyone was talking about the Upper Midwest accents of the stars, and around here, everyone was saying, "What accent?"
ReplyDeleteMost interesting, Rob! And Barb. I can tell you, that - being mostly Italian - when I hear actors or people trying to sound Italian, it drives me nuts, because it's usually wrong. They put the accent on the wrong syllable. Words in the wrong order. It definitely takes me out of the story.
ReplyDeleteBut it sounds like you would be okay with it if the accent was done properly. So the issue is not the narrator doing an accent but doing it poorly. I would agree that if you cannot do it right, do not do it at all.
DeleteActors trying to do deep New York and especially Brooklyn accents drive me crazy, because the kind of accent they're thinking about is more or less extinct. Television and subsequent media killed it long ago. I doubt there's anyone left any more who says "Toity-toid Street" except in jest. And English actors playing Americans bother me too. I can almost always tell, and they pick up on the worst of how we sound. I think audio book readers should simply read the damn book and let listeners use their imaginations.
ReplyDeleteOh, that rings a bell. Growing up in New Jersey the phony "New Joisey" accent delivered by New Yorkers was what got my goat. If you want to approximate a REAL Garden State pronunciation of the name try: "New Cherzey."
ReplyDeleteI hate when this happens in audiobooks. I think the narrators would know better but feel they must do this to demonstrate their versatility to perform different accents. But it's commonplace in films. Imagine it the other way around. You're Italian and watching an Italian movie, and all the Italian actors who are playing American characters speak Italian in an "American" accent, even when they are speaking to each other. And then, when you awake from this nightmare, go watch Alberto Sordi in the film "An American in Rome."
ReplyDelete