Thursday, May 13, 2010

Note to Tennis Channel

If I were doing a feature on Zheng Jie, perhaps I'd find a voice-over person who doesn't pronounce her name "Zen-Gay." It's bad enough that Kevin Frasier calls Chris Evert "Chris Everett," and that no one at Tennis Channel has edited the feature in which he does it. And now that the Celebrity Tennis feature is running, we have to hear Christie Brinkley tell us, over and over, how she really admires "Chris Everett." Right.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think it'd be even better if the Tour website itself had pronunciations for the players names--just checked and there's none for Zheng Jie. And why not an audio file (like Wikipedia). I like TC's Bag Check, if only to hear the players pronounce their names. And what's with the Saf-EEN-a? Dinara cleared that up at least a YEAR ago.

Mel

Diane said...

I just checked, Mel, and Zheng's name is included in the pronunciation guide.

The commentators don't care. They even make stupid remarks like, "Which is it she wants us to use?"--like the player herself has mispronounced her own name.

In the U.S., some commentators are apparently committed to using American pronunciations of players' names. I find that impolite, but--if you're going to do it--at least do it right. I'm sick of hearing Justine called "Henna"--that's a hair dye.

Anonymous said...

Sorry, Diane, I meant on the player page. I'd forgotten all about that PDF. Thanks for reminding me.

Mel

Diane said...

Sure. And I agree with you--they should be back on the player pages. Of course, that would still be too much work for the commentators.