Hey everyone, I’m a filmmaker based in LA and I have two native English speakers speaking 4 short lines of Japanese dialogue. The actors don’t speak it, but are willing to memorize the correct pronunciations. I used some online translation services as a start but would love for a native speaker to take a look. I tried reaching out to native speakers on Fiverr and they ignored me. Probably because my request seemed odd to them. Does anyone know any native Japanese speakers willing to send a voice note of Japanese pronunciation?
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If you don’t get anyone else, send me a message and I’ll have the wife take a look
You can post on apps like HelloTalk which is designed for native speakers to correct your Japanese. Reddit is designed for nonsense, so might be harder.
Cool and thank you. I reached out to a few people on hellotalk
If they don’t get back to me
I’ll take you up on your wife’s assistance @the_garlic
Hey there, I hope this helps but… depending on who the characters play, there may be different expectations of how they speak. For instance, white foreigners may be expected to speak with an American accent and that’s totally fine. However, if your actors are playing native Japanese speakers, that may be a different ballgame altogether.
Two pronunciation tips to keep in mind that fall outside of traditional International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) notation.
Japanese pronunciation uses pitch accent, which means that the voice can rise and fall in the middle of a word. People debate ad nauseum the usefulness of learning pitch accent. For foreigners, it’s not crucial. To sound like a native/pro, it’s a must.
Second is that Japanese vowel and consonant lengths are crucial. That means, koko (here) and kōkō (high school—with drawn out O), and Kōko (Kouko, a female name) are pronounced differently. Even non-native learners are expected to make these distinctions, so it’s important that your actors be aware of this aspect, even if they’re playing foreigners.
PM me if you are stuck and need someone to read them out loud for you
I can also help if you don’t get anything else
It won’t do much good to have perfect pronunciation if you’re having them speak some bizarro crap that machine translation turned out. I’d be more concerned about having a human verify the text itself rather than obsessing over the pronunciation.
u/Alarmed_Idea95 I’m not a native speaker, but I lived in Japan for a few years and gained fluency. As a fellow filmmaker myself, I’m interested to see your sentences, even if you’ve already found someone to help you. And of course I could help too if you’re still having trouble finding someone
Omoshiroooi
Use HiNative the app. You can a “how do you say ______” question and native speakers will respond
I’ll be catching up with a friend in Japan this weekend who could probably record those for you, although she’s not an actor- DM me if you want that as a possible input. I would echo what others are saying here to run the dialogue itself by a native speaker first- you could try HelloTalk or just hang around the food court at Mitsuwa or Nijiya (j/k). Wandering Sawtelle won’t be much help because there are fewer native speakers in the mix…but Torrance should be a sure bet.
One thing I would say, having seen a bit of the other side of dialogue coaching (native Japanese speakers working on their English) is that your actors might benefit from a little more preparation than just having the lines themselves to copy. Even just the heads up that the vowels are like Spanish and then some vocal warmups with shadowing the hiragana ‘alphabet’ (YouTube is a great resource) could help. Of course I also know that time is always limited and actors are usually overstretched, but DM me if you want some help finding some quick general resources and some examples of speakers to model after (ie, are you going for ojisan vibes, a chinpira persona, Todai style….?)
I don’t mind doing that if it doesn’t take too long. I’m actually interested in it.