Abstract
Drawing on the mental model theory of fictional characters (Schneider, 2001) applied to audio description (Fresno, 2016), this paper examines the audio description (AD) of characters in English and Spanish for the Netflix series Élite. The study is based on the premise that semantic descriptions of characters, rather than merely visual descriptions of physical traits, contribute to a better understanding of the narrative complexities of a film, favour AD users’ memory, and reduce cognitive effort (Fresno et al., 2016). This contrastive analysis shows how pertinent description of action movements and appearances together with lexical accuracy can trigger helpful semantic meanings that reveal characters’ psychological features. Because Élite is a thriller in which the majority of the characters are murder suspects, accessing all types of information about them is essential to fully understand the plot. In addition, this analysis indicates that the English AD emphasizes certain character attributes which are absent from the Spanish AD, a distinction that influences the semantic domains, filmic cohesion and coherence of the narrative. This finding underscores the fact that cross-linguistic and cultural differences actually affect the reception of a fictional character by AD users (Orero, 2008; Mazur & Chmiel, 2012) and consequently, their appreciation and enjoyment of the program in question. Lay summary This paper examines the audio description (AD) of characters in English and Spanish for the Netflix series Élite. Based on previous studies (Fresno, 2014; Fresno, 2016), this analysis shows that not only physical traits, but also the description of action movements and looks can trigger helpful semantic inferences that reveal crucial characters’ psychological features. Because Élite is a thriller in which most of the characters are murder suspects, grasping all types of information about them is essential to fully understand the plot. In addition, this paper indicates that the English AD emphasizes certain character attributes which are absent in the Spanish AD. This finding underscores the fact that cross-linguistic and cultural differences actually affect the reception of a fictional character by AD users (Orero, 2008; Mazur & Chmiel, 2012) and consequently, their appreciation and enjoyment of the show in question.
Highlights
Over the last decade, there has been an enormous increase in the number of streaming services and platforms that provide at-home entertainment
The theoretical framework on which this work is based is the mental model theory of literary characters proposed by Schneider (2001) and applied to the audio description (AD) of characters by Fresno (2016)
“literary characters are conceived as mental models that readers construe in the reading process through a combination of information from textual and mental sources” (Schneider, 2001, p. 608). Stretching this definition to the field of AD and characters in a film, instead of “readers”, we refer to AD users who construe their mental models of characters through a combination of information about their physical traits, emotional states, movements and behaviours from both auditory and mental sources (AD users’ knowledge and experience of the world)
Summary
There has been an enormous increase in the number of streaming services and platforms that provide at-home entertainment. What has not been addressed far is looking at AD of characters from the same show in different language versions to examine how cultural differences can impact the filmic narrative and the way audiences understand the plot of a thriller. For this reason, I decided to examine the English and Spanish AD in Episode 1 Season 1, where the characters are introduced for the first time and their descriptions are provided
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