Voice switching

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When changing voice (English voice switching ), the presenter of a literary text gives each character its own speaking voice, which differs from the others, for example in tone and / or dialect or the like. This approach is as old as literature itself and is used, for example, by parents reading fairy tales to their children or at readings .

Change of voice in audio books

Voice changes are also used with audio books . It is not clear when the technology of voice switching in its current form has been used in readings, but Helmut Qualtinger seems - if you take a comparison of commercial literary voice recordings of his time - to be one of the first popular from the early 1960s To be representatives who make increased and excessive use of this reading technique. His readings from the work The Last Days of Mankind by Karl Kraus , in which he tries to give each of the more than 500 appearing characters their own voice , attracted particular attention .

Before that, voice switching, sometimes also as a parody of voices , was almost exclusively at home in humorous presentations - one of the most accomplished masters in this regard was Ludwig Manfred Lommel .

The greatest surge in popularity of reading “with different voices” so far was triggered by the great success of the first Harry Potter audiobooks read by Rufus Beck . Since then, there has been a significant increase in voice switching in the audiobook market for readings.

Excessive voice switching can stand in contrast to an internalized way of speaking a literary text and is often too striking for critics. On the one hand, the technology offers the listener a kind of “cinema for the ears”, but on the other hand there is a risk that the literary lecture will degenerate into the mere presentation of various imitations of voices . In audio book productions of inferior quality, speakers are often given little time to mentally penetrate a spoken text. In this context, ostensible voice switching seems a welcome way to cover up poor understanding of the text.