英语学习 | 英语发音不好，有乡音怎么办？

时间：2016-11-25 11:08:12  作者：平和英语村

Artist Safwat Saleem grew up with a stutter — but as an independent animator, he decided to do his own voiceovers to give life to his characters. When YouTube commenters started mocking his Pakistani accent, it crushed him, and his voice began to leave his work. 

艺术家Safwat Saleem伴随着口吃长大，但是他作为一个独立动画制作人决定用自己的声音给角色赋予生命。当YouTube的评论嘲笑他的巴基斯坦口音时，令他很沮丧，于是他不用再自己的声音配音了。

后来究竟发生了什么？

他又是如何坚持继续用自己的声音的呢？

演讲摘要

★★★★★★

I spent my childhood feeling that if I spoke, it would become obvious that there was something wrong with me, that I was not normal. So I mostly stayed quiet. And so you see, eventually for me to even be able to use my voice in my work was a huge step for me. Every time I record audio, I fumble my way through saying each sentence many, many times, and then I go back in and pick the ones where I think I suck the least.

小时候我总觉得， 只要我一说话， 别人就会觉得我有问题， 觉得我不正常。 于是我总是很安静。 所以你看， 把我自己的声音用到我的作品里， 于我而言，已经是非常大的进步了。 每当我录音的时候， 我总是笨手笨脚的， 一句话要说好多好多遍。 然后当我剪辑的时候， 我就会挑一个我觉得最不糟糕的。

★★★★★★

Audio editing is like Photoshop for your voice. I can slow it down, speed it up, make it deeper, add an echo. And if I stutter along the way, and if I stutter along the way, I just go back in and fix it. It's magic.

音频剪辑就像 给你的声音Photoshop一样。 我给它减速、加速， 让它变得深沉、加上回音。 如果我说得不顺畅， 如果我说得不顺畅， 我就重新再修改一遍。 这就像魔法一样。

★★★★★★

Using my highly edited voice in my work was a way for me to finally sound normal to myself. But after the comments on the video, it no longer made me feel normal. And so I stopped using my voice in my work. Since then, I've thought a lot about what it means to be normal. And I've come to understandthat "normal" has a lot to do with expectations.

将经过大幅度修饰的声音用到我的视频里， 才能让我觉得自己的声音正常了一些。 不过自从看了那些评论， 这也不能让我觉得正常了。 于是我不再把自己的声音用到视频里。 在那之后，我想了很多 人们所谓的“正常”到底是什么？ 后来我开始理解了， 所谓的“正常” 与人们的期待值有关。

★★★★★★

Let me give you an example. I came across this story about the Ancient Greek writer, Homer. Now, Homer mentions very few colors in his writing. And even when he does, he seems to get them quite a bit wrong. For example, the sea is described as wine red, people's faces are sometimes green and sheep are purple. But it's not just Homer. If you look at all of the ancient literature -- Ancient Chinese, Icelandic, Greek, Indian and even the original Hebrew Bible -- they all mention very few colors. And the most popular theory for why that might be the case is that cultures begin to recognize a color only once they have the ability to make that color. So basically, if you can make a color, only then can you see it.A color like red, which was fairly easy for many cultures to make -- they began to see that color fairly early on. But a color like blue, which was much harder to make -- many cultures didn't begin to learn how to make that color until much later. They didn't begin to see it until much later as well. So until then, even though a color might be all around them, they simply did not have the ability to see it. It was invisible. It was not a part of their normal.

举个例子吧， 我想到一个故事， 是关于古希腊作家荷马的。 在荷马的作品里只提到了非常少的几种颜色。即使在描写颜色的时候， 荷马笔下的颜色也和现代人的常识不尽相同。 比如说，荷马说海是酒红色的， 人的脸有时是绿色的， 而绵羊则是紫色的。 这种现象不单单出现在荷马的作品里。 在世界古典文学中—— 古代中国、冰岛、希腊、印度的文学甚至是在希伯来圣经中提到的颜色都很少。 对这种现象最出名的解释是： 一个文明首先要能生产出一种颜色， 然后才能识别出这种颜色。 简单的说，你只有先制造出一种颜色， 才能“看见”这种颜色。 像红色这种比较方便制造的颜色 就能比较早的出现在各大文明的认知中。 然而像蓝色这种不那么方便制作的颜色， 很多文明都花了相当长的时间才最终制造出了蓝色。 于是他们也花了相当长的时间来最终“看见”蓝色。 在一个颜色被制造出来之前就算它随处可见， 人们也对它视而不见。就好像这种颜色是隐形的一样。 这种颜色不在人们 “正常”的认知范畴里。

★★★★★★

The ancient Greeks didn't just wake up one day and realize that the sky was blue. It took centuries, even, for humans to realize what we had been ignoring for so long. And so we must continuously challenge or notion of normal, because doing so is going to allow us as a society to finally see the sky for what it is.

希腊人并不是一觉醒来就会发现天是蓝的。这花了数百年，对于人类来说，我们必须挑战我们对于平常的概念。因为这样会让我们每个社会公民去寻找真正的天空是什么。

一日一记：

Sometimes your plans don't work out because God has better ones.
有时候，你的计划不奏效，是因为上天有更好的安排。