Boundary-crossing events in audio descriptions across English and Spanish

Abstrakt
 Cel badań. Przeprowadzone badania oscylują wokół zabarwienia emocjonalnego deskrypcji do reprodukcji malarskich. Punkt wyjścia dla rozważań nad audiodeskrypcją jest podział dokonany przez Romana Jakobsona, wedle którego audiodeskrypcja daje się sklasyfikować jako intersemiotyczny typ tłumaczenia audiowizualnego. W artykule zostaje podany zarys audiodeskrypcji w Polsce oraz jej ogólne ujęcie w dyskursie naukowym. Zwraca się uwagę również na dwa podejścia do tworzenia opisów audiowizualnych – niemieckie (zadaniowe i techniczne) oraz polskie (artystyczne i nastawione na wzbudzenie emocji u niewidomego odbiorcy). Celem badań jest ukazanie połączenia dydaktyki i przekazu emocji w audiodeskrypcji i określenie ich funkcji.
 Metodologia. Przedmiotem badań jest publikacja Beaty Jerzakowskiej Posłuchać obrazów, w skład której wchodzą deskrypcje do obrazów z Podstawy programowej dla uczniów gimnazjum i liceum. W ramach artykułu dokonana zostaje analiza jakościowa dwóch deskrypcji pod kątem językowym, para-tekstualnym oraz z uwzględnieniem elementów dydaktycznych.
 Wyniki. Audiodeskrypcja jest komunikatem emocji, która pomaga uczniom rozwijać swoją wrażliwość i poznawać nowe konteksty kulturowe.
 Wnioski. Deskrypcje spełniają funkcję artystyczną, ponieważ zastępują warstwę wizualną wyjściowego dzieła. Poza tym badane audiodeskrypcje niosą ze sobą funkcję edukacyjną, ponieważ stanowią uzupełnienie kształcenia literackiego i językowego uczniów. Kolejną funkcją audiodeskrypcji jest ich pragmatyzm – autorka książki świadomie łamie przyjęte standardy tworzenia audiodeskrypcji, dodając do opisów m. in. pytania retoryczne, metafory i synestezje. Ponadto dydaktyzm i próba przekazu emocji uwidaczniają się również w warstwie brzmieniowej tekstu oraz w muzyce wkomponowanej w każdą z AD.
 Słowa kluczowe: audiodeskrypcja, tłumaczenie audiowizualne, przekład intersemiotyczny, emocje.

Since 2007, there has been a systematic research conducted in the field of Audiovisual Translation (AVT) at ISCAP/ Porto Polytechnic Institute. At the time we embarked on a research endeavor focusing on audio description (AD), with the intent of systematizing AD guidelines, improving the AD process and reflecting on teaching/learning methods. This study presented at the Media For All conference, Antwerp, in 2009, aims to contribute to this project by focusing on issues linked to the generalized view that AD language should be ‘objective’ and therefore referential in nature, as stated in several guidelines. Indeed, the audio describer is even warned against expressing emotions or personal points of view. How seriously is this advice taken? Is this in fact what we should be teaching and doing? Are there identifiable common language functions in AD and are these clearly portrayed in the existing guidelines? In order to answer these questions, we assess the BBC Guidelines on the provision of television access services; the Audio Description International’s AD Guidelines Draft; the American Council of the Blind’s Audio Description Standards; the now extinct ITC Guidance on Standards for Audio Description; the Audio Description Coalition Guidelines for Audio Description, listing and contrasting their recommendations as to the ‘how’ and the ‘what’ of AD. Next, we compare these findings with randomly selected audio described feature films pertaining to the genres of drama, action, and suspense, namely Blindness, Revolutionary Road, The Happening, Body of Lies, The Eye, and Hancock. After analyzing both AD segments and movie clips in terms of visual rhetoric and Jakobson’s language functions, we propose that described movies stretch the concept of intersemiotic translation.

Audio description (AD) is a verbal description of the visual content presented aurally to the blind and visually impaired persons. AD enables people with visual impairments to perceive visual art, such as paintings and sculptures or audiovisual art, such as installations, environment, performance, theatrical art, stage performance or small and big screen pictures. Audio description, as a technique employed to present visual art to visually impaired people, is an object of audiovisual translation research and it belongs to the inter-semiotic translation because it transforms a sign from one system of signs to a content developed with the use of a different system of signs. The paper focuses on the role of audio description in providing the blind and visually impaired people with access to museum collections. The core object of research included the audio descriptions developed in art history classes at the University of Lodz for the Museum of Art in Lodz.

Audio description is an intersemiotic translation modality (Jakobson 1959/2000) that allows visually impaired people to access visual messages in different contexts, including audiovisual media, performing arts, museums and exhibitions (Snyder (ed.) 2010: 7). During the last decade, research in Translation Studies has dealt extensively with audio description and, as a result, it is now a well-established line of research within Audiovisual Translation (Gambier 2004: 9, Kruger and Orero 2010: 141). Most of these studies have focused on film and television audio description (Jiménez (ed.) 2007, Kruger 2010, Remael 2012), but there is now an incipient line of research on audio description at museums and exhibitions (de Coster and Mühleis, Neves 2012, Praxedes and Magalhães 2013, Araújo and de Oliveira 2013), to which this article intends to make a contribution. Making a museum accessible requires experts from various fields to collaborate towards the common goal of transforming the museum into an interactive social agent that contributes to universal accessibility and social inclusion. Audio description is an accessibility tool used in a growing number of museums in multiple countries (Soler 2012). It can be offered during a conducted tour or in an audio descriptive guide, and it has proved to enhance visually impaired visitors' access to the museum (RNIB y Vocal Eyes 2003: 22). The main goal of this paper is to foster the visibility and development of this accessible translation modality. In order to do so, we propose a descriptive methodology to analyse audio description as text genre and translation product. This methodology has been applied to a corpus composed of audio descriptive guides of three museum genres: art, archeology and history.

Introduction:Audio description (AD) enables access to blind/low vision audiences by translating visual content into narrated descriptions. This study examines AD translation approaches for the Oscar-winning animated short Feast. Methods: Chinese and English AD scripts from Feast were analyzed to compare priorities in content selection and patterns in translation techniques. Results: Both versions prioritized graphics and dynamic symbols when deciding what to translate. Shared translation techniques included compensation, iconic description, and substitution. Differences emerged with more reduction, adaptation, and technical descriptions in the Chinese AD, versus more generalization in the English AD. Discussion: Disparities highlight the linguistic and cultural factors integral to effective AD translation. Implications: This analysis offers practical customization guidelines for AD providers and theoretical insights into intersemiotic translation complexity. Further comparative research could support tailored AD practices and accessibility for diverse global audiences.

Recent developments in Translation Studies and translation practice have not only led to a profusion of approaches, but also to the development of new text forms and translation modes. Media Accessibility, particularly audio description (AD) and subtitling for the deaf and hard-of-hearing (SDH), is an example of such a ‘new’ mode. SDH has been evolving quickly in recent decades and new developments such as interlingual SDH and live subtitling with speech recognition bring it closer to established forms of translation and interpreting. On the one hand, interlingual SDH reintroduces Jakobson’s (1959) ‘translation proper’ while the use of speech recognition has led to the creation of a hybrid form that has affinities with both subtitling and interpreting. Audio description, for its part, cannot even be fitted into Jakobson’s ‘intersemiotic translation’ model since it involves translation from images into words. Research into AD is especially interesting since it rallies methods from adjacent disciplines, much in the same way that Holmes ([1972] 1988) described TS when it was a fledgling discipline. In 2008, Braun set out a research agenda for AD and the wealth of topics and research approaches dealt with in her article illustrate the immense complexity of this field and the work still to be done. Although AD and SDH research have developed at different paces and are concerned with different topics, converging trends do appear. Particularly the role of technology and the concept of multimodality seem to be key issues. This article aims to give an overview of current research trends in both these areas. It illustrates the possibilities of technology-driven research – particularly popular in SDH and live-subtitling research – while at the same time underlining the value of individual, human-driven approaches, which are still the main ‘modus operandi’ in the younger discipline of AD where much basic research is still required.

There is broad consensus that audio description (AD) is a modality of intersemiotic translation, but there are different views in relation to how AD can be more precisely conceptualised. While Benecke (Audiodeskription als partielle Translation. Modell und Methode, LIT, Berlin, 2014) characterises AD as ‘partial translation’, Braun (T 28: 302–313, 2016) hypothesises that what audio describers appear to ‘omit’ from their descriptions can normally be inferred by the audience, drawing on narrative cues from dialogue, mise-en-scène, kinesis, music or sound effects. The study reported in this paper tested this hypothesis using a corpus of material created during the H2020 MeMAD project. The MeMAD project aimed to improve access to audiovisual (AV) content through a combination of human and computer-based methods of description. One of the MeMAD workstreams addressed human approaches to describing visually salient cues. This included an analysis of the potential impact of omissions in AD, which is the focus of this paper. Using a corpus of approximately 500 audio described film extracts we identified the visual elements that can be considered essential for the construction of the filmic narrative and then performed a qualitative analysis of the corresponding audio descriptions to determine how these elements are verbally represented and whether any omitted elements could be inferred from other cues that are accessible to visually impaired audiences. We then identified the most likely source of these inferences and the conditions upon which retrieval could be predicated, preparing the ground for future reception studies to test our hypotheses with target audiences. In this paper, we discuss the methodology used to determine where omissions occur in the analysed audio descriptions, consider worked examples from the MeMAD500 film corpus, and outline the findings of our study namely that various strategies are relevant to inferring omitted information, including the use of proximal and distal contextual cues, and reliance on the application of common knowledge and iconic scenarios. To conclude, consideration is given to overcoming significant omissions in human-generated AD, such as using extended AD formats, and mitigating similar gaps in machine-generated descriptions, where incorporating dialogue analysis and other supplementary data into the computer model could resolve many omissions.

O estudo piloto descrito investiga o domínio de verbos de movimento na aquisição típica e atípica, com indivíduos com Síndrome de Williams. Consideram-se diferentes tipos de verbos de movimento em relação aos primitivos semânticos movimento, modo e trajetória e sua lexicalização na raiz verbal (SILVA JÚNIOR, 2015). Avalia-se a compreensão a partir de uma tarefa de julgamento de verificação de compatibilidade entre codificação linguística e eventos ocorridos. Os participantes foram apresentados a sentenças, seguidas de pequenos vídeos e deveriam responder se as frases eram ou não compatíveis com o evento exibido no vídeo. Testaram-se (i) verbos de movimento e modo, (ii) verbos de movimento e trajetória, (iii) verbos de movimento, modo e trajetória com foco na meta e (iv) verbos de movimento, modo e trajetória com trajetória delimitada. Reportam-se os dados de quinze crianças com desenvolvimento típico, quinze adultos, como grupo controle, além de um estudo de caso com um indivíduo com SW, com 10 anos de idade. Os resultados indicam efeitos de grupo e tipo de verbo. As crianças apresentam maior dificuldade nos verbos do tipo (iv). Já o indivíduo com SW, apesar de mais velho, evidencia dificuldade ainda maior nessa condição, indicando uma dificuldade não-linguística stricto sensu.

This article sketches the characteristics of a novel form of translation, audio description, as a type of inter-semiotic translation. In audio description, visual information is translated into an oral utterance in order to enhance the reception of visual or multimodal communication for blind and visually impaired people. Audio description can be used in various audio-/visual contexts such as cinema, theatre, and museums. In my article, I will focus especially on the audio description in filmic narratives. Filmic narrative is a multi-semiotic discourse that poses special challenges to audio description because of the interplay between different modes of expression, the constraint of time and the differences in visual and verbal communication. This paper aims to look at these challenges and present some strategies that are used to overcome them. The strategies will be illustrated by examples. In conclusion, I will discuss some general matters concerning the transfer between the visual and verbal modes.

Audio description in a class of L2 Italian. A didactic experiment Audio description is an inter-semiotic translation process, converting visuals into spoken language. This translation practice is meant for visually impaired individuals and aims to increase their social inclusion and the availability of suitable media products, such as audio-described movies, for this specific audience. In this contribution, however, we will not focus on the social function of this translation practice, but will explore its potential in the field of foreign language didactics. We will present the results of a didactic experiment, carried out in a class of L2 Italian at Ghent University, in which the students were asked to write an audio description script. The main goal of this exploratory study is to test the validity of audio description as a didactic tool in a class of Italian as a foreign language and to identify the linguistic challenges that emerge for the students during a task of this kind. The results indicate that audio description is certainly a valid didactic tool for an L2 learning environment, since it promotes metalinguistic reflection and consequent awareness of various aspects of the used language, such as morpho-syntactic features (pronouns, prepositions, verbs), lexical aspects (encouraging precision and variety) and the (inter)cultural dimension.

In this paper, we approach audio description (AD) from a Translation Studies point of view. The two first parts are of theoretical interest: AD is defined as a part of the audiovisual text and as a form of intersemiotic translation. Once this is set up, we concentrate on the concept of translation techniques (Molina and Hurtado, 2002) and adapt them to audio description to provide scholars and students with a functional classification of AD techniques (ADT), which can be used for descriptive studies of audio descriptions as well as in training, and is based on a functional classification of translation techniques. The paper ends with detailed examples from a comparative study of several audio descriptions of the film Slumdog Millionaire (2008) using ADTs to illustrate the benefits of the established taxonomy.

Considering Audio Description as a type of intersemiotic translation, and being aware of future opportunities in this field once laws are enforced, a course on Audio Description has been developed within the MA in Audiovisual Translation at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), compelling us to define the main competences a future professional in audio description will have to acquire. In this article, the skills put forward by various academics and professionals are analysed in order to establish the main competences that should be acquired by an audio describer, and sample activities that are used in class are discussed.

Audio description is an intersemiotic translation modality used to make art museums accessible to visually impaired visitors. Existing audio description guidelines in various countries recommend describing only that which is seen, in other words, to avoid subjective interpretations of the visual message. However, there is evidence that some visually impaired people prefer more subjective audio descriptions. The controversy around this issue has generated reception- and product-oriented studies of audio description which demonstrate that not only is subjectivity present in existing audio descriptions, but also that it may benefit the construction of a more meaningful experience. A methodology which combines corpus and contextual analysis and draws on cognitive linguistics as well as art theories has been followed in this study to examine audio descriptive guides in art museums in four different countries. Results show considerable levels of subjectivity and offer a categorization of this element. Additionally, the level and type of subjectivity appear to be influenced by contextual factors, including the level of abstraction of the artwork and the audio describer’s degree of compliance with existing guidelines.

This paper addresses the variation within color expressions in modern Finnish and the processes behind their semantic structures in audio description of visual art. Visually impaired people are entitled to experience art in its all aspects and for this purpose, museums offer audio described guidance in their exhibitions. Audio description is intersemiotic translation where visually observed parts of the work are translated into language. The study is based on audio description manuscripts from four Finnish art museums that are analyzed in comparison to the contextual aspects. The theoretical and methodological framework of this study is cognitive linguistic. Results of the analysis indicate that there is a wide-ranging diverse within color expressions, and their meanings differ based on the contexts where the expressions are used. These observations are discussed in relation to the existing guidelines regarding audio description.

Walczak presents the results of a study aimed at examining the influence of audio described films on foreign vocabulary acquisition among primary school learners with and without vision impairments. The study also tested whether audio description itself can help both sighted and partially sighted children to increase their lexical competence and better understand the content of educational movies. Finally, the study looked into whether audio describing educational films could prove helpful for young viewers with and without vision impairments, and more importantly, whether such audiovisual materials could become an additional didactic tool. The results showed that these hypotheses were supported and that it is worth introducing films with audio description into the school curriculum. The educational value of audio description was confirmed.