The Routledge Handbook of Audio Description

This Handbook provides a comprehensive overview of the expanding field of Audio Description, the practice of rendering the visual elements of a multimodal product. This is the essential guide and companion for advanced students, researchers and Audio Description professionals within translation studies and media accessibility.

The American Council of the Blind (ACB) Recipient of the 2022 Dr. Margaret Pfanstiehl Audio Description Achievement Award for Research and Development

This Handbook provides a comprehensive overview of the expanding field of audio description, the practice of rendering the visual elements of a multimodal product such as a film, painting, or live performance in the spoken mode, for the benefit principally of the blind and visually impaired community. This volume brings together scholars, researchers, practitioners and service providers, such as broadcasters from all over the world, to cover as thoroughly as possible all the theoretical and practical aspects of this discipline.

In 38 chapters, the expert authors chart how the discipline has become established both as an important professional service and as a valid academic subject, how it has evolved and how it has come to play such an important role in media accessibility. From the early history of the subject through to the challenges represented by ever-changing technology, the Handbook covers the approaches and methodologies adopted to analyse the "multimodal" text in the constant search for the optimum selection of the elements to describe.

This is the essential guide and companion for advanced students, researchers and audio description professionals within the more general spheres of translation studies and media accessibility.

Autorentext

Christopher Taylor is Full Professor (retired) of English Language and Translation at the University of Trieste, Italy. He is author of Language to Language (CUP, 2000) and more than eighty articles on general translation, audiovisual translation and audio description.

Elisa Perego is Associate Professor of English Language and Translation at the University of Trieste, Italy. She is author of Accessible communication: A cross-country journey, and numerous articles on audiovisual translation, audio description, and language simplification.

Inhalt

List of Illustrations

List of Contributors

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1. The question of accessibility

2. Access services for the blind and partially sighted: a social and legal framework for the promotion of audio description

3. A profile of audio description end-users: linguistic needs and inclusivity

4. A cognitive approach to audio description: production and reception processes ****

5. Narratology and/in audio description

6. Linguistic and textual aspects of audio description ****

7. Audio description and culture specific elements ****

8. "Ut pictura poesis": the rendering of an aesthetic artistic image in form and content

9. Audio description for the theatre: a research-based practice ****

10. Opera and dance audio description

11. Audio description for the screen

12. Museum audio description: the role of ADLAB PRO

13. Audio description in museums: a service provider perspective

14. Visitor studies: the impact of inclusive museum audio description experiences

15. Audio describing churches: in search of a template

16. The audio description professional: a sociological overview and new training perspectives

17. Audio description: a public broadcaster's core business and headache

18. Profiling audio description service providers: a questionnaire-based snapshot ****

19. Research in audio description

20. Audio Description Software ****

21. Receptor Tools ****

22. Artificial Voices

23. Video games and audio description

24. Automating audio description

25. Audio description personalisation

26. Audio introductions

27. Audio subtitling

28. Audio description translation: a retrospective

29. Audio description translation: a pilot study Chinese/Spanish

30. Audio description for the non-blind

31. University training

32. In-house training: the course at Bayerischer Rundfunk

33. Audio description in the United States

34. Audio description in Canada

35. Audio description in Australia ****

36. Audio description in Russia

37. Audio description in Brazil

38. Audio description in Slovenia
    Index