the Russian gaze

[Paul B. Gallagher]

Sarah Hurst wrote:

> Regarding the spelling of footballers' names, I do think that in
> international sport, the players have their own preferences in
> transliteration and that's the reason for it. 
> 
> As for pronunciation, I think ESPN commentators just aren't making any real
> effort at all. The BBC may be better because I know that they actually train
> their presenters on pronunciation and they have pronunciation guides. Today
> an ESPN commentator repeatedly referred to "Del Peero" while the woman
> commentator they had said "Del Pi-ero", which I believe is correct.
> 
> I don't even think the ESPN commentators could recognize the German
> chancellor. They never pointed her out although the camera has cut to her
> repeatedly. 

This has been going on at ESPN for years -- no matter what sport they 
cover, they make no effort whatsoever to determine the correct 
pronunciation. So the broadcasters take a look at the letters on the 
page and guess. Some of them seem to throw them up in the air and 
pronounce them in whatever order they fall (metasethizing at will), 
following English spelling rules. I can understand when they don't know 
the number 278 player in the world, but I find it especially offensive 
that they can't even get top players like "Sharapova" and top models 
like "Kournikova" right. I can only conclude that it's company policy -- 
it's too consistent to be anything else.

As for "del Piero," it has three syllables in all (not four), stress on 
the second "e." A faithful Russian transliteration would be 
"дель-Пьеро." Google has 188,000 hits for "Дель Пьеро," which is close 
enough.

-- 
War doesn't determine who's right, just who's left.
--
Paul B. Gallagher
pbg translations, inc.
"Russian Translations That Read Like Originals"
http://pbg-translations.com

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