Some features instantly demonstrate discrepancies with the prescriptive system of pronunciation, and even the non dubbing artist informants themselves explicitly noticed them.
4.2.1 Retroflexion
The most prominent difference in non dubbing artists recording, as Kubler (1985) and Li (1985) points out, is the absence of retroflex consonants. Out of 6 informants that recorded the lines, 3 did not pronounce retroflex sounds at all. The other 3, upon listening to their own recordings, reported that they unconsciously pronounced more “retroflexly” than they normally would. As Chang (2011) suggested, retroflexion is gradient, and the result in this study supports the view, because the notion of “more retroflexly” serves as an evidence of psychological truth for the retroflexion gradience.
Indeed, the first lesson in dubbing artists training, before advancing to performance-related, expressional issues, is adhering to Guoyu pronunciation, whose most immediately noticeable difference with daily speech is the phonemes [tʂ], [tʰʂ]
and [ʂ], which are replaced by [ts], [tʰs] and [s]. It’s an aspiring dubbing artist’s absolute prerequisite to pronunce necessary retroflex sounds when performing.
Failing to do so immediately disqualifies them from becoming even an intern.
To see an actual example from the materials, figure 4.2 is the spectrum and formants of (4) read by dubbing artist and a non dubbing artist informant respectively, displayed in Praat.
Figure 4.2: Retroflexion comparison from (4), by dubbing artist (left) and non dubbing artist informant (right)
In figure 4.2, the waveform, spectrum, romanisation and character of Mandarin are displayed from top to bottom. The red dots on the spectrum represent formants.
In the excerpt yinggaishi (應該是 ‘should be’), it can be clearly seen that the third character shi has a much higher third formant in the case of non dubbing artist informant. The lowest point of formant of the dubbing artist is around 3690 HZ while that of non dubbing artist informant is around 4435 Hz. This is because the dubbing artist pronounces the character as [ʂɿ]11, with voiceless retroflex sibilant, while the
11 The vowel here is a high back unrounded vowel with preceding consonantal frication, represented by [ɿ] in conventional Mandarin transcription and by [ɯ] (with a slur from the preceding consonant) in standard IPA. The same goes for [sɿ].
non dubbing artist informant pronounces the character as [sɿ], with voiceless alveolar fricative. As Lindau (1985), Trask (1996) and Stevens (1998) point out, retroflex consonants have lower third formants. Shi serves both copular and affirmative function and a frequently occurring character in modern spoken Mandarin. The difference between dubbing performance and daily speech here represents very well the obvious gap between prescriptive and actual pronunciation in Taiwan.
4.2.2 Downdrifting
A less obvious inconsistency is the downdrift of utterance-final rising tone (2nd tone). Interestingly this is observed in both the recordings of dubbing artists and non dubbing artist informants. Tseng (2004) finds downdrift phenomenon a general feature of Taiwan Mandarin speakers. In their experiment Taiwan Mandarin speakers generally pronounce a 1st tone significantly lower after 4th tone. In this study, jinxing (進行 ‘process’) in (7) and mianqian (面前 ‘in front of’) in (8) both have the first character in 4th tone and the second in 2nd tone. However, no rising of pitch is observed in the second characters at all, in both the recordings of dubbing artists and non dubbing artist informants. Figure 4.3 shows the downdrifting of mianqian in (8).
Figure 4.3: Downdrifting comparison from (8), by dubbing artist (left) and non dubbing artist informant (right)
In figure 4.3, the waveform, spectrum, romanisation and character of Mandarin are displayed from top to bottom. The blue line on the spectrum represents pitch contour. The two recordings exhibit similar pattern of downdrifting. This seems to be consistent with what Tseng (2004) found, because the informants in that study are radio announcers who are also professionally trained. In the basic training of dubbing artists however, the downdrift of rising tone is strictly prohibited and regarded as an extremely undesirable feature of “Taiwanese accent”. The presence of such a phenomenon in professional dubbing performance may account for the fact that different groups of dubbing artists in Taiwan very often cannot reach agreement on certain performing issue, accusing each other as inauthentic. Moreover, it also shows that even all voice actors believe they speak “the standard language”, their speech still have features that are influenced by “Taiwanese accent” and are inconsistent with the prescribed system.
4.2.3 Contraction
The last feature exhibited by non dubbing artists is the contraction of dissyllable words. The phonetic process is a common phenomenon in natural speech, as Tseng (2005), Tseng (2005), Chung (2006) and Cheng & Xu (2009) studied before. Cheng &
Xu describe the phenomenon as “extreme reduction” (the title of their 2009 study) and grouped the phenomenon into 4 types according to obstruction level. Consistent with their finding, non dubbing artist informants in this study all demonstrate obvious contractions in the recording. Daizai (待在 ‘stay in’) in (9) and jintian (今天
‘today’) in (8) belong respectively to the 3rd and 4th type, the types with strongest obstruction levels according to Cheng & Xu (2009) (namely CV+CV and CVN+CV. For a detailed description of the groups, see the methodology section of the study). Figure 4.4 shows the waveform of jintian in (8), read by dubbing artist and non dubbing artist informant.
Figure 4.4: Contraction comparison from (8), by dubbing artist (left) and non dubbing artist informant (right)
In figure 4.4, the waveform, spectrum, romanisation and character of Mandarin are displayed from top to bottom. As stated above, jintian has to the strongest level of obstruction (CVN+CV), but is contracted here by the non dubbing artist informant, where obvious distinction between the two character cannot be observed in either waveform or spectrum. This however is a phenomenon which is not observed in dubbing artist recordings, where the two characters have rather separated waveforms. Indeed, contraction, despite its common presence in daily Taiwan
Mandarin, is a taboo in dubbing performance12, and new dubbing artists are reminded not to do so since the beginning of their training.