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The voice of the T slowly fades away
By adamg on Wed, 12/07/2022 - 9:28am
The Huntington News reports the MBTA is moving away from train and bus announcements by Frank Oglesby, who has voiced them since 1997, replacing his dulcet tones with a text-to-speech synthesizer. Oglesby retired from the T in 2016, but continued to make updated announcements for the T.
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Comments
Why?
I don't understand why any organization would use a text-to-speech synthesizer for standard announcements that do not change.
Even the best synthesizers do not sound as personable or understandable as a real human. And giving a "voice" to the system is an easy way to make it connected to the communities it serves. Even if there's a small cost to pay the voice actor and (re)program the systems, it's not as if the station names change often enough for that to matter.
Automated systems make sense for delays and warnings that change, but for general station names and looped announcements ("No Smoking", "Thank for you riding the T", etc) use a real human!
100%
This decision makes absolutely zero sense. One question might be bus stop announcements, those change more frequently and getting Frank to sit down and run through dozens of hundreds of announcements may be tricky. And it's perfectly reasonable to have a voice synthesizer for real-time announcements but for things that don't change, really, there's no need. Frankly (ha) it may even be better to have two different voices, one for station announcements and another for other announcements: listen to the male voice for station announcements, and the female voice for other announcements. I don't think there are any ADA issues with this, either, as long as it is well-enunciated it should be fine.
Now, do they even sit him down very often? Nope! If you listen to the announcement for Hynes, the end of Center in "Hynes Convention Center" sounds very clipped. Why? Because the original announcement was "Hynes Convention Center, I-C-A" with the I-C-A sort of drawn out, but the Center clipped, because it was before a comma, not a period. Did they bring Frank in to rerecord it? Nope, they just clipped the sound file.
Oh, and the gravelly half-whisper which comes on for "bus connections" at some Green Line stops.
Then, of course, there are some of the 01800s on the Red Line which have the additional "Mass Eye and Ear Infirmary" announcement. After Frank's "Charles MGH, Mass General Hospital" a woman's voice comes on and says "Mass Eye and Ear Infirmary" in the most nasal, Boston accent you can imagine. Just no-notes perfection. Es where there are As (Mee-ass), slurring together words (Eye'n'Ear), a swallowing the r in ear almost entirely but keeping it to link together (Eayurhinfirmry).
Every actor playing a Boston accent should learn from her.
Every time my wife and I talk
Every time my wife and I talk about said eye/ear infirmary, we always end up yelling "Mass eye and eaaah!" at each other. We can get rid of all other announcements as long as we keep that one.
I like to imagine
that she's saying "Mass Iron Ear Infirmary" with a Boston accent.
Love it
It's as if there was a version of an iron lung, but for a widespread ear-related disease that 1800s Boston led the way in finding a cure for.
I wonder if this will result in some bad place-name
pronunciations. Waze still struggles with some Boston colloquialisms in the same way any newcomer does, though I've seen many of them corrected over time.
We all know that Copley Square is CAH-plee, not COPE-lee, and there's no plural on Boston Common or the Public Garden. But I still hear weird ones on the T occasionally, like is it TREE-mont, as I've heard on a prerecorded bus announcement, or TREH-mont, which is how I pronounce it?
Can they give the text-to-speech an OFD Mahty Walsh accent? Should they?
Boston historically didn't
Boston historically didn't have just one accent, it had several in different parts of town. Why not adjust the voice to use the one related to that area? Stations in Back Bay could have a Brahmin accent (even more so for Harvard Square), North Shore and South Shore would be different from each other, etc.
TV and radio eliminating different accents within the US has just been awful. Who would want to be so boring?
I want the announcements to
I want the announcements to have the most obnoxiously stereotypical Boston accents possible. Straight out of the Departed or the Boston Simpsons episode.
Wicked Pissah
The announcement for Kenmore Square could say something like:
"Next stop, Kenmore Square. Fenway. Wicked Pissah."
The Departed?
Only three people had real Boston accents in the Departed; Matt Damon, Mark and Bob Whalberg.
Martin Sheen did his Kennedy accent from The Missiles Of October, which we all know is Rose's early 1900's Dorchester accent rinsed and spiffed up through Harvard and Palm Beach. (Next time you watch the Wizard of Oz - Listen to Ray Bolger or Jack Haley. Also, Harold Russell in The Best Years of Our Lives for the older Boston accent).
Whalberg's comment on DiCaprio's two accents was great.
Nicholson mailed it in so much that the USPS is still afloat on it.
The other actors; Baldwin, Corrigan, Farminga, and Dale were all New Yorkers / Jerseyites and didn't try or if they did they crashed.
The British actors used Dublin accents for their parts.
We need Steve Sweeney or Lenny Clarke doing the T announcements like when you used to get Judd Hirsch welcoming you to an NYC Cab.
If we're going to use an
If we're going to use an actor doing a fake Boston accent, I'd rather have Benedict Cumberbatch, for the humor value. (Look up a few clips of him in Black Mass and you'll get what I mean.)
on the other hand
William Bulger himself had a fake accent, something in the middle of an Irish brogue and a Brahmin accent
Not limited to Boston
Many areas have localisms and also non-English place and street names that result in amusing mispronunciations.
I've noticed this in pretty much any area that uses native American names, from Iyannough Rd. on the cape to places like Sequim (squim) and Skagit on the west coast.
Already using synthesizers...
The T has been using text-to-speech synthesizers for a few years now, for temporary announcements such as "shuttle buses are operating between..." They are completely un-understandable.
the system isnt that huge
..at least the subway anyway, it should be easy enough to keep station announcements up to date with a real live voice.
i still chortle a bit when on the green line and it stops abruptly at "HYNES CONVENTION CENTER--" because years ago they just lopped off the last half second of "ICA" and never bothered to update.
one BL operator goes further
and he does all the station announcements live, himself, every single station, including all of the relevant bus connections.
he even starts each one with "gooood afternoon..."
on par with the other BL operator who, without fail, live announces Aquarium, "one of MY favorite stops" with directions on which side to exit out of the station to the Aquarium.
kind of love them.
Terrible
In order to save a small amount of one-time effort, the T is subjecting passengers to horrible grating robovoices, at every stop, every day, indefinitely. Your commute will have all the charm of a "final reminder" junk call.
PLEASE file complaints on the T's website if this bothers you! https://mbta.com/customer-support
Booooooo the standardization
Booooooo the standardization of american cities continues. Boooooo.
Also...
They seem to have changed the beep on the new Orange Line trains when the doors are open (or maybe it was just the car I was on this morning).
It still beeps constantly until the doors close — which I've always found maddening, but hopefully is helpful for the blind and visually impaired — but it now beeps a steady, continuous rhythm. Previously it would beep 15 times, followed by a half-beat pause, then 15 times again.
At least now it is easier for my brain to tune it out. I think part of the reason it was so annoying before is that I would notice every time it paused, so it never got a chance to disappear into the background noise.
Back in the 70's I was in
Back in the 70's I was in Penn Station in the afternoon rush hour period. The announcer sang the string of trains and stations in a fine operatic tenor. He had a really good voice.