LibriVox Forum

Elizabby is right, on LibriVox, the reader is the most important person, and has always been. Our founder stated it quite clearly:

The Goal of LibriVox is to make all books in the public domain available, for free, on the internet.

It just says "available" nothing more, nothing less.

I also record for the fun of it; it's fine if people listen and it's really great if I get a thank-you note, but even without either of that, I would still be recording.

Many of our readers would never have started had they known that we are doing this to please some random listener - whose taste may be fickle and erratic anyway. Nobody can please everybody, but everybody can please one person: themselves.


Mind that doesn't mean that we don't care about the quality of our recordings. Far from it! We do have our tests, we do have the requirement of "understandability". But I see this more as to give the reader a sense of accomplishment, of a job well done. If people want or don't want to listen to any of our recordings, that's up to them, not to us.

I know I'm late to the discussion, but I wanted to throw in my two cents for what it's worth.

I admit that as a listener, I've cringed a few times at a heavy accent that I had to work to understand. But that changed for me when I listened to a solo by a reader with a very thick accent and a cadence that seemed to put emphasis in all the "wrong" places.

At first, I didn't think I could make it through, but I really wanted to finish the book and didn't have time to read it on my own, so I kept going. All that to say that over the course of the book, the reader and her "hard-to-understand" voice became very dear to me. Now I can't pick up that book without hearing her accent and her cadence, and it makes me smile even more.

To any non-native speakers reading this thread, I say keep reading what you love! Some people may not be able to listen to it (although I've found some native speakers that are just as hard for me to listen to), but some people will, and you may just make a new friend!

bookAngel7

What a boring old place Librivox would be if everyone spoke with the exact same unaccented perfect English!

Pronunciation and accent wise, we here at Librivox are not the World Cup football, or The Ashes cricket Test, or the Super Bowl, with rigidly-enforced rules. We are the lunchtime or weekend pickup game of football, cricket, whatever, in the local park. There are rules to the games, but they rest lightly on the fun experience.

Besides, nothing improves one’s abilities like just jumping right in and playing the game.


Chris

SonOfTheExiles wrote:What a boring old place Librivox would be if everyone spoke with the exact same unaccented perfect English!

Pronunciation and accent wise, we here at Librivox are not the World Cup football, or The Ashes cricket Test, or the Super Bowl, with rigidly-enforced rules. We are the lunchtime or weekend pickup game of football, cricket, whatever, in the local park. There are rules to the games, but they rest lightly on the fun experience.

Besides, nothing improves one’s abilities like just jumping right in and playing the game.


Chris

Absolutely right!

I've just had a short listen to some of your work, and if I could do an Australian accent like that, with such good characterisation, I would give a lot. Even though I'm English, I bet you could do an even better posh English accent than me! Wonderful!

Thank you kindly, Peter!

I’ve attempted posh in the DR plays, but I seem to have found a niche as “Bombastic Senior British Officer, whose blood-pressure is about to spray out his ears”. LOL

Regards,
Chris

I'm sure that Chris could also do an impressive Tommy Raudonikis:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-aZWGIavx_o

Cheers

Carn the Mighty Maggies, Algy!

Chris

TriciaG wrote: ↑March 24th, 2011, 7:25 am Keep in mind that we allow other readers to make alternate recordings of chapters they find incomprehensible. If you cannot get through ReaderX's rendering, you may provide an alternate voice for posterity.

Can you tell me more about this alternate recording of chapters, and how a listener can access them.

msfry wrote: ↑January 4th, 2018, 12:39 pm

TriciaG wrote: ↑March 24th, 2011, 7:25 am Keep in mind that we allow other readers to make alternate recordings of chapters they find incomprehensible. If you cannot get through ReaderX's rendering, you may provide an alternate voice for posterity.

Can you tell me more about this alternate recording of chapters, and how a listener can access them.

They are with the original project. I just did a quick search on "alternate recording Librivox" at Archive and found one - which apparently isn't due to bad accent/pronunciation; I don't know the reason for it. But you can see what it looks like: https://archive.org/details/amiable_charlatan_1207_librivox/ or https://librivox.org/an-amiable-charlatan-by-e-phillips-oppenheim/

TriciaG wrote: ↑January 4th, 2018, 12:55 pm

msfry wrote: ↑January 4th, 2018, 12:39 pmCan you tell me more about this alternate recording of chapters, and how a listener can access them.

They are with the original project. I just did a quick search on "alternate recording Librivox" at Archive and found one - which apparently isn't due to bad accent/pronunciation; I don't know the reason for it. But you can see what it looks like: https://archive.org/details/amiable_charlatan_1207_librivox/ or https://librivox.org/an-amiable-charlatan-by-e-phillips-oppenheim/

So I run across a book with a chapter I deem unintelligible or otherwise objectionable, already catalogued. I want to re-record that chapter. And do so. Then what? How do I get it added to the project?
Or, must this second version of a chapter be added to the project before cataloguing? And I presume only with the BC's permission. Or possibly at the BC's invitation, for who else but the BC and DPL know what it sounds like until after it is catalogued.

There are different reasons for alternate readings to be done . There have been , mostly way back, times when dupicate readings were submitted in good faith by different readers, and both were catalogued.
Very very rarely in a collective reading , there has been chapters that many people found impossible to follow - it's usually not everyone , those would not pass a PLer , but it's always easier to understand people who live in your area and your country so it doesn't mean the reading was bad, just that some people found it hard to follow. And in those cases someone has volunteered to read an alternative chapter and it has been added to the existing project.
But I repeat - it will never be because someone thinks it's badly read , or should be read by a man/woman/English/American/slower/faster and any of the other things that some people say.

Hope this helps

Anne