Reading Outloud--An Acquired Skill

Keith demonstrating

As the previous post illustrates, reading out loud is an acquired skill. Keith has seen (or, rather, heard) this over and over again in the course of recording. Some people will have excellent voices for a part, say, of the apostle "Mark." They are literate in the national language. But when they sit down to actually record, they stumble. And sometimes, instead of reading: At that time Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan, they say something like: At that time Jesus Nazareth from came and was Galilee baptized in.
Some of this, Keith credits to being unused to reading their own language. They may have read Slovak or German or whatever in school, but they really are not used to seeing their Romani language in print. It takes a bit of practice for the brain to translate these marks on the page (or the screen) into what are essentially oral/ auditory meanings. Add to this the fact that written language IS different than spoken language. And add to this the fact that Keith is frequently recording languages which are infrequently written. So maybe they haven't been written very well. Jesus at that time from Nazareth in Galilee came is acceptable English, but is it good contemporary English?

All this to say that recording a language which is usually oral rather than written is a good thing. Many Romany are much more used to getting and making sense of things that they hear rather than from what they read. But recording a language which is usually oral rather than written from a written text is not always possible. Sometimes it just works better to have someone from the translation team say At that time Jesus came from Nazareth . . . with the desired phrasing and intonation and have "Mark" repeat exactly what he just heard. Oral/auditory-to-auditory/oral. In what form do you best encounter the WORD?