A Translational and Narratological Approach to Audio Describing Narrative Characters

Vercauteren, Gert

doi:10.7202/1037746ar

Cited by 5 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 22 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Filmler/diziler ve edebiyat metinlerindeki karakterleri betimlemenin güçlüğü çoğunlukla gerçek yaşamda olduğu gibi bu karakterlerin görünüş, davranış, konuşma ve iletişim biçimleriyle birbirlerinden farklı olmalarından kaynaklanır. Vercauteren (2014) bu farklı özellikleri çözümleyerek, belirli bir düzen içinde seyirciye iletebilmek için oluşturduğu modelinde anlatıbilim alanında çalışan Uri Margolin, Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan ve Mieke Bal'ın görüşlerinden yararlanmıştır. Margolin (2007) karakterleri diğerlerinden farklı kılan özelliklere ilişkin üç kategoriden oluşan bir sınıflandırma yapar.…”

Section: Vercauteren Modeliunclassified

Dönem dizilerinde karakter betimlemeleri: Payitaht Abdülhamid

Şulha

2022

RumeliDE Dil Ve Edebiyat Araştırmaları Dergisi

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

As there are visually impaired individuals among the TV series audience, an additional narrative that fits the gaps between the dialogues should be produced and voiced. The audio description of the TV series is one of the main practices carried out in the field of media accessibility. Just like in feature films, in the audio description process of the TV series the translators who assume the task of the script writer deal with problems such as under which conditions, how, to what extent and when the distinguishing characteristics of different characters that are the basic components of the film narrative should be described. Gert Vercauteren (2014) aims to bring a solution to these problems using a systematic model based on narratology. According to this functional model, if the visually impaired audience sees the film character for the first time the physical, behavioral/communicational and mental characteristics that help recognize him/her are described. However, if the character is known from the previous scenes, it is proposed that the description content is organized regarding the character’s specific situation in the scene, i.e. his/her new characteristic or a change in his/her character and a new dimension in his/her relations with the time, space and actions (Vercauteren, 2016: 12-13). In this study using Vercauteren’s model, the process of audio describing characters is analyzed through the exemplary scenes from the selected episodes in the TV series entitled Payitaht Abdülhamid, which narrates the struggle of the Sultan Abdülhamid II during the last thirteen years of his reign. In conclusion, although the model has been designed for the description of different film genres in general, it is determined that it has also been practical and time-saving in the textual analysis of the TV series, which involves the translator’s identification of the visual elements to be described as regards the needs of the audience, during the production of the fraction of the descriptive text narrating the characters particular to a historical period.

show abstract

Section: Vercauteren Modeliunclassified

Dönem dizilerinde karakter betimlemeleri: Payitaht Abdülhamid

Şulha

2022

RumeliDE Dil Ve Edebiyat Araştırmaları Dergisi

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The idea that audience members are not just passive consumers but actively process and interpret the film or TV series they are watching and thus participate in the creation of its meaning, can offer a solid approach to decide which information to include and which to omit, as will be explained in section 2. It offers audio describers a systematic tool to prioritize information and allows them to explain why they made certain choices in their description, an important requirement in both instructional and professional contexts (Nord, 1991;Vercauteren, 2014).…”

Section: Content Selection In Existing Ad Guidelinesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A third line of research starts from the observation that many audiovisual products, including but not limited to films and TV series, tell a story, and that insights into how these stories are created (i.e., what content elements they contain) and into how they are processed and interpreted by the audience (i.e., what content elements the audience needs to understand the story that is being told), can help audio describers to select and prioritize the most relevant content. It is this narratological approach, explored amongst other academics by Pujol and Orero (2007), Kruger (2009Kruger ( , 2010; Kruger and Orero (2010), Vercauteren (2012Vercauteren ( , 2014; Vercauteren and Remael (2015) that will be adopted in the remainder of this paper.…”

Section: Content Selection In Existing Ad Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Insights From Mental Model Theory and Cognitive Narratology as a Tool for Content Selection in Audio Description

Vercauteren

2021

JAT

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

One of the main questions in audio description (AD) to which no systematic answers have been provided yet, is how to decide what information you include in your description and – if there is not enough time to describe everything – how you prioritize that information. In the present paper I want to propose an answer to this problem by asking the question: how do audiences process (filmic) stories and what information do they need to process them? The basic idea underlying this question is that people process and interpret stories by creating mental models (Johnson-Laird, 1983) of these stories. The paper explains how these models are created, what information is necessary to create them and what is optional, thus helping describers to decide what information in their description is “need-to-have” and what is “nice-to-have”. The theoretical explanation will be applied to the opening of the film Slumdog millionaire (Boyle, 2008), to illustrate how the theory works and can be used in daily practice. Lay summary Audio description (AD) for film is a service for people with sight loss that weaves a verbal description of visual elements and unclear sound effects they do not have access to, between the dialogues of the original production. Since this description cannot interfere with the dialogues, there often is very little time for AD and describers will have to decide what to include and what to leave out of their descriptions. In this article, I present a way to tackle this problem, based on the basic idea that films generally tell stories and that the audio description should allow the target audience to recreate that story in their minds. More specifically I focus on two questions, namely a) how do audiences mentally recreate stories and b) what elements do they need to do so. Insights into these two questions will show audio describers what information the target audience needs to recreate the story told in the film, and hence will help them to decide what information they really need to include in their AD. After a theoretical exploration of these two questions, the approach will be illustrated by means of a concrete example, taken from the film Slumdog millionaire (Boyle, 2008).

show abstract

“…Nonetheless, as pointed out by Vercauteren (2016: 74): "if we claim that audio description is a form of translation, it only seems reasonably that we try to apply paradigms used for other types of translation to audio description too". The paradigm suggested by Vercauteren (2016) is that of functionalism. It would go beyond the scope of the present paper to explore this choice in detail, but two elements that are relevant in the light of guideline creation are that functionalism requires translators a) to give a detailed analysis of their source text to determine what to translate and how, and b) to decide what strategies they will use to create their translation.…”

Section: European Guidelines and Standardsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The fact that the (audio-)visual products that are described usually tell a story and narratology as the theory of story-tellingoffers a suitable framework to analyse and explain the audio description process and product, has been discussed before; see among othersKruger (2009Kruger ( , 2010,Vercauteren (2016Vercauteren ( , 2012 orVercauteren and Remael (2015).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

When East Meets West: A Comparison of Audio Description Guidelines in China and Europe

Carroggio

Vercauteren

2020

Hikma

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Despite China being the country with most disabled people in the world, the provision of media accessibility services and their academic study are still at a crawling stage. The present study departed from two objectives: to present a sample of three Chinese AD guidelines that mainly serve for training purposes, and to compare the Chinese situation in terms of guidelines to that of Europe, to see if there are any relevant differences to point out and any mutual lessons to be learnt. Our results show there are a lot of general similarities between the different Chinese and European guidelines and that the main difference is the different approach to objective vs. subjective description.

show abstract

A Translational and Narratological Approach to Audio Describing Narrative Characters

Cited by 5 publications

References 22 publications

Dönem dizilerinde karakter betimlemeleri: Payitaht Abdülhamid

Dönem dizilerinde karakter betimlemeleri: Payitaht Abdülhamid

Insights From Mental Model Theory and Cognitive Narratology as a Tool for Content Selection in Audio Description

When East Meets West: A Comparison of Audio Description Guidelines in China and Europe

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About