Hi Tim - I finally got to listen. Five voices in concert could be quite effective. I think the WEB Bible was the most effective. The eth suffixes in the archaic versions made for more difficulty hearing. This is partly because of the archaism and partly due to the accent. Your reader has a pronounced short e vowel. The word breath for example comes to my ear as brith and it takes me a moment to decode it. One could get used to it. I think too that the speech is long - and more spondee - or unexpected accentuation of verb and object is required. 10 times - is this the eleventh round of speeches? then he lists his complaints - somehow we need to hear them in groups of 3 and 4 or we will lose focus - I am thinking here of the limitations of the listener related to a list of 7 (+/-2)things. I think Job's character must understate the list so as not to be heard as whining but as a matter of fact complaint about things he has no control over. And what inner light causes that change to I know that my go'el lives? It is the same gift of light that the psalmist receives - how can this be put across aurally? - by understatement, pace, pause, etc. I would want to hear the human tone - hope without a shadow of piety.

By  Bob MacDonald, at May 26, 2007 8:23 AM  

Regarding the first comment:

Thanks for letting me know what specific problems you have with my accent. I briefly considered imitating a different, more well-known accent (i.e. one that appears on TV outside New Zealand), in order to make myself more easily understood, but I don't know if I'm skilled enough to pull it off without creating more problems than I solve. A better idea is probably for me to slow down a little, so that listeners can have time to interpret my accent. Of course, the readers haven't actually been chosen yet; I was just the first person who happened to get around to recording a sample chapter for comparing translations.

By the way, if I've correctly understood what you're saying, you seem to have quite a different understanding of Job from me. You see a "matter of fact complaint", whereas I see strong emotions like anger and frustration all over the place. Sure, Job's words seem quite sedate in the prologue, where he says “Naked I came out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there. Yahweh gave, and Yahweh has taken away. Blessed be the name of Yahweh.” (although he had just torn his robe), but in his very first speech he seems to be quite frustrated, to put it mildly, effectively saying "I sometimes wish I'd never been born at all!". (Now, am I making reference to Bohemian Rhapsody, or was Queen making reference to Job? Probably only the former, given the divergent contexts.) Of course, I may be mistaken. Since I'm not a reader of ancient Hebrew, my opinions on Job are based only on the English translations I've read, a little commentary, and my own personal experience of chronic illness.

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By  tjm1983, at May 27, 2007 4:44 PM  

Accents are really difficult in this online world. What sounds perfectly normal to one person sounds strange to another. We've had some people write in about PodBible that they only like this or that reader! For this project different accents will be less of a problem than they potentially are on PodBible because each speaker will be heard for several chapters at a time.

Questions of interpretation are more "problematic" because to read is always (intentionally or not) to provide a reading! I think on that one we'll just have to choose readers and parts and then let them interpret - perhaps we could (a) get each reader to do several small chunks and then pick people for parts and (b) discuss the interpretations a bit - though I think I prefer the idea of letting each reader work it out for themselves. That was in a way part of the motive for the project. Like different actors "reading" MacBeth differently - though without the director ;-)

By  Tim, at May 28, 2007 5:57 AM  

PS The slowing down idea is probably a good one, for all the readers, if we do as I hope have an international team everyone will sound "strange and foreign" to some listeners!

By  Tim, at May 28, 2007 5:59 AM  

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