Evaluation of soundscape attribute translations from English to Croatian

Abstract

The methods for data collection and analysis in soundscape research have been standardized in the ISO/TS 12913 group of standards. The perceived quality of soundscapes is now assessed using the eight standardized soundscape attributes distributed around the circumplex model: ‘pleasant’, ‘vibrant’, ‘eventful’, ‘chaotic’, ‘annoying’, ‘monotonous’, ‘uneventful’, and ‘calm’. As a part of the Soundscape Attribute Translation Project (SATP), the objective of this research is to provide the translations of these eight attributes into Croatian language and to evaluate the validity of these translations. Based on the Croatian translations of the attributes used in previous soundscape studies and the additional optional translations provided by independent translators, the eight soundscape attributes have been translated into Croatian as ‘ugodan’, ‘uzbudljiv/živahan’, ‘sadržajan/pun događaja’, ‘kaotičan/uznemirujuć’, ‘neugodan’, ‘dosadan’, ‘besadržajan/prazan’, and ‘smirujuć’, respectively. The validity of these translations was evaluated through a listening experiment with 32 Croatian native speakers as participants, who rated the 27 sound samples that form the audio dataset of the SATP project. The data collected in the experiment was compared to the results of the study performed in the United Kingdom with English native speakers who used the standardized questionnaire in English. The results show that the Croatian translations of the fundamental, primary attributes that define the pleasantness-eventfulness plane, i.e. ‘pleasant’ − ‘annoying’ and ‘eventful’ − ‘uneventful’ are unambiguous and appropriate, as Croatian listeners understood and rated them in the same manner as their UK counterparts. On the other hand, the results reveal a very strong association of the perception of vibrancy with eventfulness, the perception of chaoticity with annoyance, and the perception of calmness with pleasantness displayed by the Croatian participants. This finding calls for a revision of the translations of the composite, secondary attributes ‘vibrant’, ‘chaotic’, and ‘calm’ respectively. The translation of the composite attribute ‘monotonous’ has been chosen well, as the results reflect its proper perception as a blend of uneventfulness and annoyance.