EASIT. Easy Access for Social Inclusion Training.
This is unit 3C. Easy to understand language
and audiovisual journalism. Element 1. Processes.
The process of creation, adaptation and validation of easy to understand
audiovisual journalistic content.
I am Andrej Tomažin, from RTV Slovenija.
And in this video lecture I will focus on the processes
surrounding the creation, adaptation and validation of easy to understand
audiovisual journalistic content.
Firstly, we must distinguish between two core principles.
The first is the original creation of easy to understand content
and the second one is the adaptation of standard material
into easy to understand content.
In creating easy to understand audiovisual journalistic content
one has to preliminary focus on the theme and narration
which is carried out by the editors and journalists.
This process is followed by the organization of shooting
and recording the raw material. The organization of TV recording
consists of orchestrating the camera crew and logistics,
preparing the questions and in the case of easy to understand content,
for example, informing the interviewees to answer slowly
or providing other features on which we will focus upon later in this lecture.
Adaptation takes a different approach by having the theme and the material
already at hand.
The largest part of adaptation happens
with the editing process, which is in greater detail
described in another video lecture from Unit 3C,
conveniently titled Editing and voicing
easy to understand audiovisual journalistic content.
The core principle in adaptation
that precedes editing and voicing is the choice of news content
to be adapted and prepared in easy to understand fashion,
and the selection of material which is produced beforehand
and to adopt a different approach
regarding the narration and presentation.
As Christiane Maaß and Sergio Hernandez
point out in their article “Easy and Plain Language in
Audiovisual Translation”,
following the ideas proposed by Pablo Romero-Fresco
in his book Accessible Filmmaking,
planning the integration of accessibility services
during the production phase, including easy-to-understand language,
leads to a more perceptible and accessible product.
One of the crucial things with recording for audiovisual media
is to make sure there is enough material prepared for the later stage of editing.
Even though a journalist has a clear idea of what will be included in the news item,
the technical circumstances can lead to certain shot
not being usable or relevant.
Other kinds of errors can be different intrusions into the scenery.
For example: if there is a random person
traversing a landscape the narrator talks about
and that random person has no role in the narration
or even distorts the image,
this material will most probably not be useful.
The cameraman needs to make sure
there are different shots of the same scene,
so they can be later combined in the correct manner
and used in the proper context. That is why the cameraman
usually makes much more material than is later used.
As a journalist, producing news for any kind of media,
you first need to have a reliable source of information.
In case of foreign news,
the information is provided by international news feeds
or foreign correspondents.
Whereas for domestic news the list is longer:
it can be yourself, local news agencies,
social media, news conferences, media releases,
newspapers or other radio or TV stations.
The exclusive way of accessing information is by contacting different people who might
give you accurate information on the topic.
Based on the given information you can, for example, arrange an interview.
The interview allows you to present exclusive information
regarding a certain topic.
The figure of the interviewee gives the news item an integral sense
of assurance with respect to its authenticity.
With easy to understand audiovisual journalistic content
the journalist should make sure that the uttered answers
from the interviewee comply with easy to understand guidelines.
With regards to this issue,
we need to understand that it is not always possible
to implement Easy Language in spoken scenarios,
because it is not natural to speak in that fashion.
It could be viewed as patronizing
to use Easy Language for comprehensibility purposes.
Plain Language is more suitable for spoken scenarios.
This means that the interviewee must understand these guidelines
and use them with care, for example not to use them in a patronizing tone.
The task of the journalist before the interview takes place
is to explain the purpose of the interview
as short and as concise as possible.
The core principles are for interviewees to talk slower and in short sentences,
but staying true to the topic they are referring to,
not describing it as they would describe it for children,
which seems to be the most common misunderstanding
with easy to understand content.
With easy to understand audiovisual journalistic content
the interviews must be introduced with an adequate degree of context.
If we, for example, interview a healthcare professional
on the risks of the spread of some novel disease,
the journalist has to make sure
that the information from the interviewee
is not placed at the beginning,
no matter how important the words that are spoken,
but is contextualized with the help of narration.
The context, the narrative introduction
of a certain topic plays a crucial role
with the easy to understand audiovisual journalism.
When using graphics as a tool for explaining the narration,
the graphics should be clear and not too fast
and not overabundant with information.
Not seldom can one see in contemporary news bulletins
the graphical explanations and statistical information
being presented in a way
which is incomprehensible because the speed
of the delivered information is too fast.
In this sense the graphics should firstly correspond
to the narration and secondly be explained
within the narration, with special attention
accorded to the details.
Details should be as minimized as possible
and the graphics or statistical representations
should only show the information,
pertinent to the topic and the narration.
With short broadcast deadlines in mind,
it is, as Barbara Alysen suggests in The Electronic Reporter,
“harder to write a clear, tight story than to convey the same information
in a longer one.”
Even without the deadlines in mind, both radio and TV news items
need to be shorter than their textual counterparts,
but as concise and tight
in delivering information.
It is here where the characteristics of journalism
must be juxtaposed with the easy to understand guidelines.
We can understand the difficulty when faced
with the task of narrating, for example, a news item
on a difficult political situation in E2U format.
There are certain topics
riddled with difficult vocabulary. For example, the topics of corruption
and elections.
These topics must be addressed in a precise manner.
Especially when dealing with delicate topics,
where the main figures do not talk clearly,
use difficult words or are vague in their statements.
It is in this sense, where the journalistic need of accuracy
and easy to understand need for understandability collide.
We can understand producing easy to understand news items
as a task, which demands from the journalist
to assess every situation in detail and decide which processes
will be used to achieve the degree of understandibility
in easy to understand format.
Since easy to understand language incorporates both Easy Language and also Plain Language,
the normativity of Easy Language makes it harder for the journalist
to adapt or create audiovisual journalistic content in Easy Language.
The principles of simplifying the content in Easy Language
and the principles of verification and accuracy
collide with greater force.
This problem must be always solved on an individual level,
sometimes raising the language difficulty
at the expense towards the easiness of the news item,
but on the other hand simplifying the complex concepts
to the detriment of detailed description.
One of the relevant aspects here is the marking of the target group:
to whom the news items are intended has a significant weight
in deciding as to whether the language is more complex or not.
At the same time, it is clear that
easy to understand audiovisual journalism is a novel endeavour,
and as such lacks theoretical research. Or as Maaß and Hernandez propose:
“In audiovisual contexts, Easy Language has not yet been addressed theoretically,
even though there is a mounting number of practical examples.”
Many of the problems that arise in the first phases
of easy to understand audiovisual journalistic content production
are quickly resolved with the help of validation.
Validation as such is mentioned in the two out of three
existing Easy Language guidelines, but can, even without those guidelines
serve as a great help for producers
of easy to understand audiovisual journalistic content,
for those, for example, producing audiovisual
journalistic content in Plain Language.
The validation process is in most cases done by external collaborators,
who test the understandability of the finished product
and assess what could be done differently.
Different target groups must be taken into consideration,
people with cognitive or reading disabilities,
second language learners, elderly.
On the other hand, involving users from the beginning is vital
since they know the problems or difficulties
they are confronting, and probably also what will make
the content easier to understand.
If we decide to validate the audiovisual journalistic content
then the validation needs to be assessed
in a consistent way and with the understanding
that the users of easy to understand audiovisual journalistic content
form a rather heterogeneous group.
Validation is necessary to know the wishes and approaches
suitable for the target groups and to replicate them in other content.
Within the larger context of TV or radio broadcasts, which tend to be produced
for a broader audience, journalists might need to find
a proper way to address the question, posed by Bredel and Maaß
in the book “Leichte Sprache”, where they say that quality control
of the finished texts, and news items in our case, is faced with a problem,
where “due to the considerable heterogeneity
of the primary addressees, the examining item
has to be undertaken by a large number
of different readers or users, and the question of whether texts
checked by individual readers from different groups
guarantee the general comprehensibility of a text would not be answered
because of the random selection of the examiners.”
The use of easy to understand audiovisual journalistic materials
for a broader variety of context
in this sense presents a problem as to how to actually enforce
adequate quality control at a proper level.
Broadening the scope of analysis and validation is certainly a first step,
but we must at the same time acknowledge that this complexity
should not lead us to avoid the involvement of the end-users
in the process of validating easy to understand
audiovisual journalistic content.
This video lecture was prepared by Andrej Tomažin from RTV Slovenija.
You can reach me at andrej.tomazin@rtvslo.si.
Partners of the EASIT project: Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona,
Universita degli studi di Trieste, Universida de Vigo,
Stiftung Universität
Hildesheim,
SDI München, Dyslexiförbundet,
RTV Slovenija, Zavod Risa.
EASIT. Easy Access for Social Inclusion Training.