Every job has a set of minimum requirements, things that you kind of have to get right to do the job.

For an audiobook narrator, one of the biggest ones is just saying the names of people and places correctly.

When you're reading, you know, the Lord of the Rings for the first time, you don't know how to say those names.

They're crazy.

But my job is to know how to say them.

That's Sean Pratt. He's been an audiobook narrator for 25 years and has 1,200 audiobook titles under his belt.

So here's how he nails down pronunciations. If it's a fiction book, he goes straight to the source, the author.

He sends them a list of the tricky names.

And I say, go to the voice memo on your phone, say this name slowly, twice, and then I'll

write it up phonetically on my end.

For names from non-English languages, he uses a website.

There's one called forvo.com, F-O-R-V-O.

It stands for foreign voice.

And so you can hear a native speaker say the word, like,

how do you say this name that's Turkish?

Because it's got a funny-looking C-Letter there.

How do you say that?

Oh, it's a C-H sound, got it, or it's an S sound, or it's a Z sound, or whatever.

If that sounds laborious, that's because it is.

So he often hires researchers to help him track down pronunciations.

But even with all those safeguards, mistakes can creep in.

So I did this book on stoicism recently, and there was a philosopher, she was a cynic,

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