the white zone is for the loading and unloading of passengers only ...

[fox]

so i spent today recording sample sentences for a dictionary marketed for beginning english learners.  in the past, the accompanying CD-ROMs have only offered recordings of the head words for each entry, although they've shown them used in sentences; but for this edition they're offering the whole sentence, so two of us are going a page at a time and recording thousands of these things and trying to sound as natural as possible.  my greatest triumph was i'll call you later; hers was he's so funny!  we both found ourselves doing the old acting-class thing where you try to imagine what was happening right before the scene began -- what can these sentences be responding to, i mean to say, and that makes them sound more natural a lot of the time, but on the other hand you have to be careful not to give them a reading that only makes sense in context.  i had can your children tell time? and very nearly said can your children tell time?, like, all defensively.  hee!

something like 54 sentences per page.  we did 44 pages today.  there are about 65 more to go.  crazy, man.  and there's a point at which your own language stops making sense to you, and your own voice sounds totally alien.  at least the two of us have something to do; the people from the press who are sitting there monitoring the whole project were getting a little loopy by the end of the day, and the poor sound-engineer kid who came with the lab (up at brookes) was practically comatose by lunchtime.

Comments

[axiom_of_stripe]

and there's a point at which your own language stops making sense to you, and your own voice sounds totally alien.

crazy fun!