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This is unit 3B: Easy-to-understand
and audio description.
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Element 1: Processes.
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Video Lecture:
What is Easy-to-Understand art AD?
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I am Elisa Perego,
from Università degli Studi di Trieste.
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In this video lecture
I will define
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audio descripition, focus on art AD,
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and offer hints and examples
on how to make it simpler.
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The multimodal world we live in
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has become more and more inclusive
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for people with different abilities.
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Screen products, exhibitions
and static art forms
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are no longer inaccessible
to people with sight loss.
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Audio description is a form
of accessible, assistive,
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and intersemiotic
audiovisual translation, that
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enables us to transfer
the relevant visual elements of a text
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into a verbal aural narrative.
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Depending on what we audio describe,
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the audio description can be
more or less complex.
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In art AD, texts are normally long.
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Lexically, they are varied and dense.
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They are precise
and use specialized words.
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They use many adjectives,
like descriptors
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which are very long as in:
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“an extraordinarily luminous
sulphur-lemon yellow”
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used by audio describer Louise Fryer
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to describe the background
of Van Gogh's painting Sunflowers.
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Syntaxwise, art ADs use longer sentences
than screen ADs.
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They use structures normally avoided
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because considered unreadable.
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For instance: passive voices,
heavy subordination,
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and embedded structures.
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An example, from the AD
of Van Gogh’s famous painting
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shows what I mean.
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I quote Fryer’s AD:
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“The sunflowers
are mostly grouped in threes
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around a central flower facing us,
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with swirling orange and brown middle,
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energetic, sinuous golden brushstrokes
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radiating from the top for petals
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and similar pale green strokes
at the bottom for sepals
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where the petals have fallen off.”
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Listening to such a complex description
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can certainly put off some users.
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To make information clear
and easy to understand
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follow some simple standards,
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like those illustrated
in the Inclusion Europe guidelines.
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First, pick short sentences
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and don't overload them
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with unnecessary
syntactic components.
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Subject (S) verb (V) object (O)
might just be enough.
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Focus on salient words,
use high-frequency and common items.
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Do not elaborate on adjectives
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and pick one-word
attributive inherent ones,
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which denote clearly
the quality of the noun.
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Let’s focus on the Sunflower example.
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A way to go when adapting
or translating an existing text
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is highlighting salient
and necessary items.
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You can see them
emboldened on the slide.
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I selected:
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orange and brown middle,
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energetic,
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golden brushstrokes,
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petals,
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pale green,
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sepals.
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I decided to avoid words like:
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mostly,
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swirling,
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sinuous,
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radiating.
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Reformulate difficult words
and use common items,
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or even longer
but less technical reformulations.
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So, brushstrokes can become
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"the marks of the brush
made by the painter".
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The sepals are:
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"the outer part of a flower
that surround the petals".
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So, the description
can become:
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"The sunflowers are grouped in threes.
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The sunflowers
group around a central flower.
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The central flower faces us.
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Its middle part is orange and brown.
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The petals are golden.
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Some petals have fallen off.
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The outer part of the flowers
is pale green.
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The style of the painter is unique.
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The marks of the brush are lively."
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Once your E2U AD is ready,
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don't forget to consider
its listenability.
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This is the ease with which
a material is listened to,
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understood,
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and enjoyed.
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Remember: readability
and listenability are different concepts
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and they might not overlap.
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Since your text cannot be re-read,
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make sure the message is
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"instantly intelligible",
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stimulating and attention grabbing.
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Take an audience-centred perspective
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when you audio describe.
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To produce a listenable text
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use an oral-based style,
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do not read too fast,
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and convey engagement.
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Select an appropriate voice
for aural reproduction,
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calibrate the volume
and the quality of the recording,
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and adjust the rate of delivery.
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I hope these recommendations
were useful.
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It is up to you now to find
more ways to write
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or adapt art ADs,
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integrating E2U
and listenability principles.
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The picture of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers/
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comes from Wikimedia Commons,
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a collection of more than 64 million
freely usable media files.
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It was published by Diego Delso,
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under the Creative Commons Attribution
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ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license.
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All the other pictures
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come from the Public Domain
Vectors website,
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which gathers royalty-free
vector images
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under the Creative Commons Universal
Public Domain Dedication license.
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This video lecture
was prepared by Elisa Perego
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and produced by Martina Atzeri
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from Università degli Studi di Trieste.
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You can reach me at eperego@units.it.