[DTB-Talk] Bard sensoring certain material?

[Dale HELTZER]

I've been reding NLS narrated books for 50 years, even stuff that was not at all age-appropriate. I've never encountered any shortage of "blue" language, even with recent titles.
As far as I can tell, NLS narrators read what is on the page.

Commercial audio books may be another matter.

As an example, Team of Vipers, by Cliff Sims, has "those words" bleeped. I assume this was done by a decision of the author and/or audio book producer. I accept that.

I speculate that perhaps any discrepancy between the commercial audio book downloaded from another source and that from NLS could possibly be explained by the two versions being different editions of the same book; sometimes changes are made.
I would invite anyone who has specific titles and sources demonstrating possible censorship to contact me off-list.


Be well
-D

 ---
Dale E. Heltzer
deheltzer at msn.com

-----Original Message-----
From: DTB-Talk <dtb-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of Christopher Gilland via DTB-Talk
Sent: Friday, July 26, 2019 1:06 PM
To: dtb-talk at nfbnet.org
Cc: Christopher Gilland <clgilland07 at gmail.com>
Subject: [DTB-Talk] Bard sensoring certain material?

OK, I just made a discovery today which does not at all make me the slightest bit happy.

I'm not one for swearing, however, neither am I one for sensorship.

I was listening to a book which I'd downloaded from Bard, come to think of it, this was the 2nd title I've noticed this. I'm only quoting here from a book, so please do not ban me for a simple quotation, and not that of my own remark, but one line in the book said, "by the look on her face, you would have thought she didn't give a shit." What you actually heard however in the downloaded Bard recording was, she didn't give a... bee'eep. The only way I know they said the word s h i t is because it's a commurcial audio book, and, it just so happens that I downloaded the original mainstream recording from Audible, as I was very curious if they actually bleeped the word in the mainstream recording. 
I've found most audio books Bard or not, if there is a swear word, regardless cultural beliefs etc, the narrator *has* to say it. If you're a pro narrator, from what I understand, you have to put emotions and things like that aside in order for the recording to past quality control screening. Anyway, on the actual Audible version, same narrator, same recording, etc, it was not bleeped out. I could make out the word clear as night and day.

This led me to check the other book to see if the book did the same thing. I downloaded the Bard book again to my shelf, went to the chapter in question, and listened through Bard. The line was, and no, even quoting, I'm not gonna repeat this word as it's way more offensive to many than the sh word, but basically, the line was, it was f**king crazy.

The narrator on the Bard version said, effing crazy. When I listened to the version on Audible, and even checked the actual print text through a scanned copy on Bookshare, the actual F word was there. Again, I ab, suh, lootly! do not condone that type language, however, that said, come on! It's a book for Pete sake!

Why're Bard narrators all of a sudden unlike before being coached evidently to not just read what is on the page? Both these books were fairly newer titles. Bard didn't seem to used to do this.

What changed?

Chris.

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