Outside of a Dog: Palin, Michael: Around the World in 80 Days (audio)

David Tate

David Tate wrote on July 25, 2006 at 9:21 AM:

Palin uses light accents when recounting conversations. He didn't get to America until day 63, so I couldn't judge how good he was until then; he doesn't do the worst American accent I've ever heard, but it's pretty clearly identifiable as a British person doing an American accent[...]

I wonder how much of that is deliberate. If I'm recounting humorous anecdotes to an audience of Americans, and need a British-isles accent for one character, I'm probably not going to aim for precise reproduction. I'm more likely to make it a stock caricature, recognizable even to my American audience as such, for humor value. I wouldn't be surprised if Palin does the same, adopting a stereotypical Brit-imitating-Yank accent as part of the travelogue game.

Kate

Kate wrote on July 25, 2006 at 9:24 AM:

David: since it seemed to my ear that he was varying it a bit for each different person, probably not. I'd prefer him to be bad at accents than to be making fun of people, actually.

David Tate

David Tate wrote on July 25, 2006 at 4:23 PM:

Making fun of people? That's an interesting interpretation of what I said, and I'm not sure how you got there unless you think that all humor is "making fun of people".

Let me turn it around: what other motivation (that you prefer) might he have had for attempting to reproduce the accent of the speaker?

Kate

Kate wrote on July 25, 2006 at 4:28 PM:

Because in an audiobook, it would be incredibly jarring to render the dialogue of people from India, China, Yugoslavia (when it was still Yugoslavia), and America in a straight British accent?

And I was working from "stock caricature" and "humor value."

David Tate

David Tate wrote on July 26, 2006 at 11:50 AM:

I think I misunderstood what you meant by "recounting conversations", then. You're not talking about reported speech; you're talking about acting each of the parts in a dialogue?

I don't think that changes my original quibble though. His goal is still going to be to give each of the characters a recognizable voice, just as in any audiobook reading. Accuracy to the precise accent that person really used (since this is nonfiction) isn't really important to that; recognition by the audience is more important. So, I'd think a standard accent would be more likely to achieve all of his goals than a perfectly accurate accent.

(And I still don't see anything in either 'caricature' or 'humor', or the combination of the two, that implies making fun of people. Would you argue that Al Hirschfeld drawings of celebrities made fun of them in a distasteful manner?)