A narratological approach to content selection in audio description: towards a strategy for the description of narratological time

Abstract

As more and more countries start to provide audio description services for a growing range of products and events, research into this new discipline is growing and diversifying as well. Two questions that seem to be at the heart of much of this research focus on what should be described and how this should be done, in other words on content selection and formulation of the description. The present article looks at the first of these two questions and approaches it from a narratological point of view. After a general discussion of the use of narratology for audio description, the focus will shift to one particular constituent of narrative, namely time. The different temporal aspects will be discussed in greater detail, after which a strategy for the audio description of time in film will be proposed. RésuméDe plus en plus de pays commencent à offrir des services d'audio description pour un nombre croissant de produits et évènements. La recherche dans cette nouvelle discipline a de ce fait tendance à se développer et à se diversifier. Deux questions paraissent être au coeur de nombreuses recherches : que faut-il décrire et comment faut-il le faire ? Ou, en d'autres termes, quel contenu choisir et comment formuler la description ? Cet article se penche sur la première question et adopte une approche à partir d'un point de vue narratologique. Après une discussion générale sur l'utilité de la narratologie à des fins d'audio description, l'accent sera mis sur un composant particulier de la narration: le temps. Les différents aspects temporels seront examinés plus en détails et une stratégie d'audio description du temps pour le cinéma sera proposée.

A Translational and Narratological Approach to Audio Describing Narrative Characters

“…Earlier contributions already demonstrated the usefulness of narratology for source text analysis and content selection in audio description (cf. Kruger, 2010;Vercauteren, 2012;Vercauteren and Remael, 2014). The strategy discussed above seems to confirm that it can also be used for the analysis and audio description of characters.…”

“…Kenny, 1998, for an overview of some of the typologies developed to define the concept of equivalence), would most probably be impossible for the intersemiotic translation process of audio description, given the completely different logics governing verbal and visual communication (cf. Kress and Van Leeuwen, 2006;Vercauteren, 2012). By making the purpose or intended function of the target text the essence of the translation process, the target audience becomes more important, too.…”

Stories of resistance in Greek street Art: A cognitive-semiotic approach

“…Fludernik, 1996), enactive cognition (e.g. Caracciolo, 2013Caracciolo, , 2014Popova, 2015), film, audio description and drama studies (Bordwell, 2007;Diget, 2019;Vercauteren, 2012), history, philosophy and sociology (e.g. Todorov, 1969Todorov, , 1971, literary studies (e.g.…”

Percepción de referentes culturales audiovisuales por parte de una audiencia normovidente

“…La AD fílmica ha suscitado el interés investigador desde hace al menos dos décadas, centrándose en diversos aspectos de las películas como los personajes (Ballester 2007;Fresno 2014), las expresiones faciales (Vercauteren y Orero 2013;Mazur 2014), el tiempo (Vercauteren 2012), los títulos de crédito y los logotipos (Matamala y Orero 2011;Matamala 2014), el lenguaje cinematográfico y el montaje (Perego 2014), la intertextualidad (Valero Gisbert 2012;Taylor 2014), los efectos especiales (Matamala y Remael 2015) o la banda sonora (Igareda 2012;Szarkowska y Orero 2014), por citar solo algunos trabajos relevantes.…”