"English language commentators do not research how names of foreign personalities"
A review of Eurosport TV Channel by Peter Reynders - Saturday 17th of October 2009
When watching, say, a tennis match (or any other program) on a continental European channel I note (non-British and non-Yank) commentators have taken the trouble to find out how names of celebs, sportspeople, politicians etc, are pronounced in their home country.English language Eurosport commentators don't care, they simply read the name the Anglo way and that's it. This means that they misinform us, are lazy, are the least professional of the bunch.
You will find that a girl named Petra, from say the Check republic, Finland, Holland, Switzerland or Germany pronounces her name something like pay-trah and not like pet - ruh. No English speaking commentator has even discovered that Federer is really pronounced fay- derer, rather than fedderer. Are these microphone jockeys and commentators paid for this sloppy job? They shouldn't. If so they should be replaced by others who care about communicating the right sound that goes with the names of people. They owe a bit of respect to the people that are the basis of their job. Attention should be placed to the sound of names and to placing the emphasis being placed in the right syllable. I can provide hundreds of examples of such badly pronounced names, but you get my point. The players, celebs etc. themselves will tolerate it as commentators are the conduit to publicity, but quietly they think condescendingly about these practices and hence about the practitioners: They may think: that a cheap jerk, does he or she think they do a professional job? (Some celebs fight back like the Iceland musician Bjork ( with dots on the o) by putting on her website: "rhymes with jerk"). The employing channel should make some simple lessons available to their microphone employees as to how in languages other than English the A, an E, and i etc tend to be pronounced. It is not rocket-science. ( In German for example an i is often pronounced like EE: Linz sounds like Leenz, Hitler like Heetler, nobody ever noticed... funny that..Merkel is NOT pronounced murkel)
This aspect (and some others) makes Anglo-Saxon media people second rate.
I hope someone starts taking note of this so a future generation of media people may be up the scratch on that point.
Peter Reynders
Australia
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