Intralinguistic variation in the audio description of a short film
Matamala, Anna (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona)

Date:	2017
Abstract:	Audio description (Maszerwoska et al 2015) is the translation of visuals into words, so that users who cannot access the visual content can understand and comprehend audiovisual products. Audio description has captured the attention of many translation scholars who have investigated this specific type of intersemiotic translation from a myriad of perspectives. Research has often been descriptive, either based on case studies or on corpora (Jiménez Hurtado et al 2010, Salway 2007). Despite their relevance, these corpora are not always available in open access, and they often focus on one language, providing one single audio description per audiovisual content. This paper aims to take a slightly different approach and shed light on how various describers approach the translation of the same visual input into words. And, additionally, it aims to analyse the similarities and differences when comparing professional describers and novices. The focus will be in the output and not in the process, and data provided by the VIW corpus will be used (Matamala and Villegas 2016). The VIW project, inspired by Chafe's (1980) Pear Stories and its implementation in audio description (Mazur and Kruger 2012), has gathered a corpus of audio descriptions of the same audiovisual input: a short film by film director Núria Nia. More specifically, it contains ten professional audio descriptions in English (6,777 words), Spanish (6,095) and Catalan (6,888), and ten audio descriptions by students in Spanish (6,777) and seven by students in Catalan (5,185). More information can be found here: pagines. uab. cat/viw. The analysis presented at the AIETI conference will focus on the Spanish audio descriptions and will provide a comparison of both qualitative and quantitative data, contrasting the output from professionals and novices. Some quantitative data that will be compared are: number of words, sentences, and audio description units; AD distribution along the timeline; word frequency and word distribution, among other features. On the other hand, a qualitative analysis will allow us to highlight commonalities and divergences in the audio description of the seminal aspects of any audio description: who (characters), where and when (spatio-temporal settings), what (actions), and how.
Abstract:	This paper is part of the NEA project (http://pagines. uab. cat/nea/), reference code FFI2015-64038-P (MINECO/FEDER, UE), whose first specific aim is to research audio description from both an inter and an intralinguistic perspective.
Grants:	Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad FFI2015-64038-P Agència de Gestió d'Ajuts Universitaris i de Recerca 2014/SGR0027
Rights:	Aquest document està subjecte a una llicència d'ús Creative Commons. Es permet la reproducció total o parcial, la distribució, la comunicació pública de l'obra i la creació d'obres derivades, sempre que no sigui amb finalitats comercials, i sempre que es reconegui l'autoria de l'obra original.
Language:	Anglès
Document:	Contribució a congrés
Subject:	Audiodescripció, traducció audiovisual, accessibilitat, corpus ; Audio description, audiovisual translation, accessibility, corpus ; Audiodescripción, traducción audiovisual, accesibilidad, corpus
Published in:	Congreso Asociación Ibérica de Estudios de Traducción e Interpretación (AIETI). Alcalà de Henares (Espanya), 8è : 2017

24 p, 1.7 MB

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Research literature > UAB research groups literature > Research Centres and Groups (research output) > Arts and Humanities > TransMedia Catalonia
Contributions to meetings and congresses > Presentations