Abstract
Communication is becoming more and more (audio)visual, social and mobile. This is true not only of the entertainment industry but also of commercial advertising and institutional public communication. Consequently, the audiovisual translation industry is flourishing. Although a growing array of products outside the field of entertainment are being localised and/or made accessible, they have received scant attention so far, whether in academic or professional circles. This is notably the case of the institutional video subgenre. This practice report will first address the importance of using increasingly multilingual and multimodal audiovisual products in EU external communication – a tool for reaching out to more citizens on social media and boosting their active participation at a time when populism and Euroscepticism are on the rise. The focus will then shift to the audiovisual communication of the Council of the EU. Through a case study which aims to investigate the internal localisation in all EU official languages of the “#Europeans” series of videos – produced for the 2019 EU elections – the rest of the paper will then outline the main features of the institutional audiovisual translation subgenre. It will also identify some opportunities for improvement: a more integrated and interdisciplinary approach which – together with reinforced collaboration with academia – could lead to a real multilingual creative process right from the initial steps of the audiovisual production process.
Highlights
As Díaz-Cintas and Remael (2020) underline in their latest publication, audiovisual translation (AVT) “has existed as a professional practice since the invention of the cinema,” it remained a niche both in academic circles and in the industry until the end of the last millennium, when the digital boom led to a proliferation of audiovisual material
A case study will show how the abovementioned communication trends have been recently applied by the General Secretariat of the Council of the EU (GSC)
According to D’Ambrosi (2019), in a sort of vicious circle, these challenges may have been partly compounded by a European public communication strategy that has not been fully capable of making citizens understand how national and European bodies work and what their actual responsibilities are in the EU decision-making process
Summary
As Díaz-Cintas and Remael (2020) underline in their latest publication, audiovisual translation (AVT) “has existed as a professional practice since the invention of the cinema,” it remained a niche both in academic circles and in the industry until the end of the last millennium, when the digital boom led to a proliferation of audiovisual material. According to D’Ambrosi (2019), in a sort of vicious circle, these challenges may have been partly compounded by a European public communication strategy that has not been fully capable of making citizens understand how national and European bodies work and what their actual responsibilities are in the EU decision-making process This is why the new strategic approach aims at enhancing coordination between the various European institutions – in cooperation with local entities – in the field of communication so as to bring citizens closer to European policies, in the most transparent and effective way possible, including through an increasing focus on the cornerstone of the Web 2.0 communication seen above. In such a multicultural context, responding to the motto of “united in diversity”, languages were immediately recognised as the bearers of (national) identity and democracy, and they still remain a key element in the mosaic of European public communication
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