Étienne and Eliane Bertillon are certainly not Romeo and Juliet -- I’m so glad for that and I bet they are, too! -- but the way we “hear” a hero’s name in a story is something quite serious and very, very personal. I felt a rather unsettling feeling when I realized that on some occasions (and there were a lot!) the way I heard some characters’ names in my head was completely different than what the author intended. After the initial shock, I concluded that these heroes were even closer to my heart and more part of me than the rest I pronounced right. Other times it was a matter of decision. For example, the first edition of Michael Strogoff is this: I couldn’t cope with that Michel Strogoff so I turned it to Michael Strogoff (the way any English speaker would find the book in order to read it.) Still, in my mind he’ll always be Michail Strogoff as I first read his name (in a Greek translation of the book.) After all, the "indeed a man" according to the Czar himself lived in 19th century Russia. (Anyone knowing Russian here?) Anyway, I got more than a couple of readers who were wondering about the way Étienne’s and Eliane’s names in Time Not Wasted are pronounced--or to be more accurate… how I hear their names in my head because as I found out there are plenty of ways to pronounce them. At first I searched online (of course!) and found this YouTube video. It sounds a bit robotic, isn't it?
There is a video where the accent in "Eliane" is on the first syllable but I don't like that at all! "Eliane" is pronounced ehL-iy-AE-N while for "Étienne" the best I found were "et-ee-N" and "Ate-T-ann". Something between these two is what I hear. We should not forget that the people live in France (in another universe, late 19th cent Southern France which still exists just for our sake’s--isn’t Fiction a blast?) so I prefer the intonation to be on the last syllables. I think this is a reason I stayed away from an audiobook conversion. French accents tend to sound ridiculous when tried by actors. And after all, I don’t hear a French accent when I read their inner thoughts. They think in their mind’s language and if that happens to be in French but we listen to it in English… this is another one of Fiction’s little miracles. Finally, the video I found for "Bertillon" was awful! For starters, it had a very clear-sounding "LL" and an "R" that could pierce my ears. (I'm not embedding it here to save you!) Again: this is French! I wish I had native speaker to help me but I never heard such a clear “R” in any of the French movies I watched--and they are a lot! Please don’t get discouraged if what you hear while reading the story is totally different than what it's “supposed to be”. That only makes the reading experience more personal. In the end, a name does not really affect who one is, “that which we call a rose by any other word would smell as sweet” as even that silly girl who died due to a misunderstanding --a.k.a. Juliet-- knew very well. Useless trivia: did you know that Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet based on another story written earlier with a very-very-very similar plot? I don’t recall the author’s name at the moment but I have read it. Let me tell you: the mastery of the craftsmanship makes ALL the difference! In that earlier version Juliet dies by … holding her breath. And useless trivia No2: I picked the name “Bertillon” after Alphonse Bertillon, the Frenchman who introduced the "Bertillonage", a system of criminal identification that was named after him. It was based on the finding that several measures of physical features, such as the dimensions of bony structures in the body remain fairly constant throughout adult life. Still, as disclaimers say “Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.” After all, my Bertillon is a convicted murderer. ;-)
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