[EASIT intro music]
EASIT. Easy Access for Social Inclusion Training.
This is Unit 3B. Easy to Understand and audio description.
Element 2. Linguistic aspects.
Video lecture:
Creating intertextual relations: an example.
My name is Piero Cavallo.
I have prepared this video lecture in collaboration with Rocío Bernabé Caro,
on behalf of the Internationale Hochschule SDI München, in Germany.
In this video lecture, we are going to give a quick overview
on what intertextuality is and how to solve lexical barriers
that might derive from the use of specialised terminology
in a broadcasted news, with a practical example.
The focus is on how a standard text and an E2U text can interact
to avoid assuming that readers share the same lexical repertoire
in the E2U text.
First of all: what is intertextuality?
Intertextuality is the characteristic of a text to have relations
with other texts.
Every text has intertextual relations with other texts.
These relations can be implicit or explicit.
These relations can refer to other texts, in the form of citations.
Or they can be implicit or explicit reference
to the specificities of the text itself,
that range from the terminology used,
to the structure of the text and the sentences.
For instance, if a regular reader reads an article about medicine,
it is highly probable that the text will have
some medical-related words in it.
This means that the reader expects to find this type of terminology.
Likewise, if an experienced reader reads a newspaper,
it is immediately clear to him or her,
that he or she is reading a newspaper,
because the structure of the text and sentences is unique
to that type of text.
An experienced reader could deduce this information from the context
or fill the information that is missing
either before, during, or after he or she has read the text.
For other users, this task might be difficult.
In fact, texts that presuppose knowledge from other texts
can be complex for the readers to process.
This is why, if the information is relevant to understand the text,
it should be added directly to the text.
This is also true for audio-visual contents, that are texts.
Every audio-visual content has its own specificities,
like texts do.
For instance, a comedy film is different than a newscast,
in terms of terminology and structure.
If you want to learn more about intertextuality,
you can consider watching the video lecture on this topic,
from Unit 2, element 4.
Since we cannot presuppose that users of easy-to-understand language
have previous knowledge on a text subject,
it can be helpful to provide short explanations,
in order to clarify this previous knowledge.
This information can be conveyed through different ways.
It can be provided as a written or an audio introduction
that users can read or listen to before watching the actual content.
It can also be provided as a so-called "extended audio description",
as defined by the Web Content Accessibility guidelines 2.2.
An “extended audio description” is an enlarged audio description
that is provided in a video by pausing it,
so that there is enough time to convey additional description
of what is happening on screen.
This technique has already been used in legal texts by Bathia (1983),
who labels it as "easification".
The core idea is to maintain the original text unchanged
while providing so-called "easification devices"
that help information intake.
In extended audio descriptions,
the easification devices are explanatory information.
But what if a user needs both the support of easy-to-understand language
along with audio description and audio subtitles,
for audio-visual contents in a foreign language?
In this case “extended audio subtitles” can be provided.
What are “extended audio subtitles”?
Audio subtitles, as you may know,
help people who are unable,
or have difficulties reading a text,
but who instead require the text to be read out.
The “extended” feature is taken from the concept
of “extended audio description”,
i.e. when the audio description
of an audio-visual content needs to be paused
in case of longer descriptions.
Following this idea, extended audio subtitles can be used
both to read out the subtitles
and to provide additional contextual and intertextual information.
This additional information is necessary
for the target groups to understand the content.
We are aware that this is a new, hybrid service
that has not been realised or studied yet.
In this video lecture, we just want to provide an example.
We also hope to obtain feedback from reception studies soon
to share with you.
In our example, we show a short video,
which length was originally of 1 minute,
from the Slovenian broadcast RTV Slovenija.
The news item is about how things have changed in hospitals
for pregnant women
who are about to give birth during the current COVID-19 pandemic.
As you could expect, the news item presupposes some knowledge,
related to topics like hospitals, COVID-19, and pregnancy.
In our sample,
we provide easy-to-understand audio subtitles in English.
This means that the subtitles will be read out.
Furthermore, the video will be paused to provide additional information,
as it occurs in the case of extended audio descriptions.
The subtitles are also provided in written form,
and are burnt-in
in the video, just for the purpose of this video lecture.
The subtitles are the same provided in the video lecture
from Unit 3A, Element 2.
They have been simplified
following the guidelines of Inclusion Europe
and the conventions and style of journalistic texts.
Finally, we decided to provide 2 versions of the same example.
One of them has a slower speech rate.
This slower version might be more suitable for a certain segment of users,
and support the readability.
the number of characters per second
(in short, cps)
in the slower version
does not exceed the maximum of 15 cps per subtitle event,
as recommended in subtitling for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing people.
In this way, users that can read the subtitles can do that more easily.
Similarly, users that access the content
through the audio mode only
can also benefit from a slower speech rate.
To maintain the maximum of 15 cps
also in the written subtitles of the standard version,
we decided to leave the subtitles for a longer time on screen,
while keeping the audio subtitles at a standard speech rate,
and respecting synchrony.
Of course, the additional information provided,
the speech rate,
and the degree of simplification
can be adapted according to the end-users’ needs.
What should extended audio subtitles convey?
The recommendations for extended audio descriptions
and subtitles from Inclusion Europe
remember the importance to explain the subject clearly
and also explain any difficult word.
So, apart from the easy-to-understand audio subtitles themselves,
extended audio subtitles could convey a summary,
that introduces the general and specific content to the viewer.
For the sample we are using,
it can specify that the viewer is about to watch a short video
from a broadcast in another language
with easy-to-understand audio subtitles in English.
It can also specify what the video is about,
i.e. the current situation in hospitals
for pregnant women during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Similarly, terminology on an expert subject like this one can be explained.
In our example, COVID-19,
or simply COVID, as it is usually referred to,
can be explained as a “disease”, or an “illness”.
All this additional information is conveyed by pausing the video,
as in the case of extended audio descriptions.
Now, let’s watch the sample,
with extended audio subtitles at a standard speech rate:
Now, let’s watch the sample,
with the same extended audio subtitles at a slower speech rate:
In this video lecture,
we have seen that intertextuality is the characteristic of texts
to refer to other texts,
explicitly and implicitly.
These relations can refer to the text itself and to the text type.
Easy-to-understand users might find it difficult to notice these relations.
Because of that,
these relations need to be made explicit and more easily noticeable,
which might include making pre-supposed knowledge explicit.
One way to make intertextuality more clear
can be the use of extended audio subtitles.
These can be used to help people who require audio subtitles
and also additional information to explain the context,
the environment, and also difficult words or expressions.
Different speech rates and degrees of simplification can be offered,
to be more suitable to the needs of end-users.
This video lecture has been prepared by Piero Cavallo and Rocío Bernabé Caro
from the Internationale Hochschule SDI München, in Germany.
You can reach Rocío Bernabé at
rocio.bernabe@sdi-muenchen.de
The project EASIT have received funding from the European Commission
under the Erasmus+ Strategic Partnerships for Higher Education programme,
grant agreement 2018-1-ES01-KA203-05275.
The European Commission support for the production of this publication
does not constitute an endorsement of the contents,
which reflect the views only of the authors,
and the Commission cannot be held responsible
for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Partners of the EASIT project:
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.
Università degli Studi di Trieste.
Universidade de Vigo.
Stiftung Universität Hildesheim.
SDI München.
Dyslexiförbundet.
Radiotelevizija Slovenija.
Zavod RISA.
[EASIT outro music]
EASIT. Easy Access for Social Inclusion Training.