Cover not available
Article published In:
Audiovisual translation in applied linguistics: Educational perspectives
Edited by Laura Incalcaterra McLoughlin, Jennifer Lertola and Noa Talaván
[Translation and Translanguaging in Multilingual Contexts 4:1] 2018
► pp. 178–202

Studying the language of Dutch audio description

An example of a corpus-based analysis

| TricS Research Group, Department of Translators and Interpreters, University of Antwerp
The present paper aims to combine insights from Applied Linguistics, Corpus Linguistics, Multimodality Research and Audiovisual Translation Studies in order to explore language use in a specific form of audiovisual translation, namely Audio Description (AD) for the blind and visually impaired. It is said that the communicative function of ADs and their multimodal context have a significant influence on the lexical, grammatical and syntactical choices describers make. This article aims to uncover these idiosyncratic linguistic patterns by conducting a quantitative and qualitative analysis of an annotated, audiovisual corpus of 39 Dutch films and series that have been released with AD in Flanders and the Netherlands. The paper analyses frequency lists, keywords, part-of-speech distributions and type-token ratios statistically and subsequently conducts a qualitative analysis taking systemic functional linguistics as a theoretical framework. The results confirm the hypothesis that the language of AD is idiosyncratic and highlight the most salient lexico-grammatical features characterising the language of Dutch AD.
Keywords: Audio Description, Corpus Studies, Audiovisual Translation, Multimodality
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The Dutch AD corpus
    • 2.1Corpus design
    • 2.2Statistical processing
    • 2.3Overview of the data
  • 3.The systemic functional linguistic analysis
    • 3.1Theoretical framework
    • 3.2Analysis
      • 3.2.1Processes – verbials
      • 3.2.2Participants – nominals
      • 3.2.3Circumstances – adverbials and prepositional phrases
      • 3.2.4Lexical cohesion
  • 4.Concluding remarks
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 24 April 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ttmc.00009.rev
References (31)
References
Arma, Saveria. 2011. The Language of Filmic Audio Description: A Corpus-Based Analysis of Adjectives. PhD diss., Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II,).Google Scholar
Bourne, Julian, and Catalina Jiménez. 2007. “From the Visual to the Verbal in Two Languages: A Contrastive Analysis of the Audio Description of The Hours in English and Spanish.” In Media for All: Subtitling for the Deaf, Audio Description and Sign Language, ed. by Jorge Díaz Cintas, Pilar Orero and Aline Remael, 175–187. Amsterdam: Rodopi. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Braun, Sabine. 2011. “Creating Coherence in Audio Description.” Meta: Translators’ Journal 56 (3): 645–662. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chmiel, Agnieszka, and Iwona Mazur. 2012. “AD Reception Research: Some Methodological Considerations.” In Emerging Topics in Translation: Audio Description, ed. by Elisa Perego, 57–80. Trieste: EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste.Google Scholar
Eggins, Susanne. 1994. An Introduction to Systemic Functional Linguistics. London: Pinter Publishers.Google Scholar
Field, Andy. 2009. Discovering Statistics Using SPSS. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Fryer, Louise, and Jonathan Freeman. 2012. “Presence in Those with and without Sight: Implications for Virtual Reality and Audio Description.” Journal of Cyber Therapy and Rehabilitation 5 (1): 15–23.Google Scholar
. 2013. “Cinematic Language and the Description of Film: Keeping AD Users in the Frame.” Perspectives: Studies in Translatology 21 (3): 412–426. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gambier, Yves. 2006. “Multimodality and Audiovisual Translation.” In Audiovisual Translation Scenarios: Proceedings of the Marie Curie Euroconferences MuTra, ed. by Mary Carroll, Heidrun Gerzymisch-Arbogast and Sandra Nauert.Google Scholar
. 2009. “Challenges in Research on Audiovisual Translation.” In Translation Research Projects, ed. by Anthony Pym and Alexandra Perekrestenko, 17–15. Tarragona: Intercultural Studies Group.Google Scholar
Halliday, Michael A. 1994. Introduction to Functional Grammar. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Jiménez, Catalina, and Claudia Seibel. 2012. “Multisemiotic and Multimodal Corpus Analysis in Audio Description: TRACCE.” In Media for All: Audiovisual Translation and Media Accessibility at the Crossroads, ed. by Aline Remael, Mary Carroll, and Pilar Orero, 409–425. Amsterdam: Rodopi. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Keuleers, Emmanuel, and Marc Brysbaert. 2010. “Subtlex-nl: A New Measure for Dutch Word Frequency Based on Film Subtitles.” Research Methods 42 (3): 643–650. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kluckhöhn, K. 2005. “Informationsstrukturierung als Kompensationsstrategie: Audiodekription und Syntax.” In Horfilm. Bildkompensation durch Sprache, ed. by Ulla Fix, 49–66. Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag.Google Scholar
Matamala, Anna, Pilar Orero, and Laura Puigdomenech. 2010. “Audio Description of Films: State of the Art and a Protocol Proposal.” In Perspectives on Audiovisual Translation, ed. by Lukasz Bogucki and Krzysztof Kredens, 27–43. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Nuzzo, Regina. 2014. “Statistical Errors: P Values, the ‘Gold Standard’ of Statistical Validity, Are Not As Reliable As Many Scientists Assume.” Nature 5061: 150–152. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ofcom. 2000. ITC Guidance on Standards for Audio Description. London: The Independent Television Commission.Google Scholar
Orero, Pilar. 2012. “Film Reading for Writing Audio Descriptions: A Word is Worth a Thousand images?” In Emerging Topics in Translation: Audio Description, ed. by Elisa Perego, 13–28. Trieste: EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste.Google Scholar
Pérez-González, Luis. 2014. Audiovisual Translation: Theories, Methods, Issues. London/New York: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Remael, Aline, Gert Vercauteren, and Nina Reviers, eds. 2014. Pictures Painted in Words: ADLAB Audio Description Guidelines. Trieste: ADLAB.Google Scholar
Remael, Aline and Nina Reviers, forthcoming. “Multimodal Cohesion in Accessible Films: A First Inventory”. In The Routledge Handbook of Audiovisual Translation Studies, ed. by Luis Perez Gonzales. London: Routledge.
Remael, Aline, Nina Reviers, and Reinhild Vandekerckhove. 2016. “From Translation Studies and Audiovisual Translation to Media Accessibility.” Target 28 (2): 248–260. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Reviers, Nina, Aline Remael, and Walter Daelemans. 2015. “The Language of Audio Description in Dutch: Results of a Corpus Study.” In New Points of View on Audiovisual Translation and Accessibility, ed. by Anna Jankowska et al., 167–189. Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Reviers, Nina, and Aline Remael. 2015. “Recreating Multimodal Cohesion in Audio Description: A Case Study of Audio Subtitling in Dutch Multilingual Films.” New Voices in Translation Studies 131: 50–75.Google Scholar
Reviers, Nina. 2016. “Audio Description in Europe: An Update.” The Journal of Specialised Translation 261: 232–247.Google Scholar
Royce, Terry D. 2007. “Intersemiotic Complementarity: A Framework for Multimodal Discourse Analysis.” In New Directions in the Analysis of Multimodal Discourse, ed. by Terry D. Royce and W. Bowcher, 63–109. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Earlbaum.Google Scholar
Salway, Andrew, Elia Tomadaki, and Andrew Vassiliou. 2004. “Building and Analysing a Corpus of Audio Description Scripts.” (Research report). University of Surrey.Google Scholar
Salway, Andrew. 2007. “A Corpus-Based Analysis of Audio Description.” In Media for All: Subtitling for the Deaf, Audio Description and Sign Language, ed. by Jorge Díaz Cintas, Pilar Orero, and Aline Remael, 151–174. Amsterdam: Rodopi. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sindoni, Maria G. 2011. Systemic-Functional Grammar and Multimodal Studies: An Introduction with Text Analysis. Pavia: Ibis.Google Scholar
Van den Bosch, Busser Bertjan Antal, Sander Canisius, and Walter Daelemans. 2007. “An Efficient Memory-Based Morpho-Syntactic Tagger and Parser for Dutch.” In Computational Linguistics in the Netherlands: Selected Papers from the Seventeenth CLIN Meeting, ed. by P. Dirix, I. Schuurman, V. Vandeghinste, and F. Van Eynde, 99–114. Leuven, Belgium: KUL.Google Scholar
Vercauteren, Gert. 2012. “Narratological Approach to Content Selection in Audio Description. Towards a Strategy for the Description of Narratological Time.” Monti: Multidisciplinary in Audiovisual Translation 41: 207–231. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by (2)

Cited by two other publications

Wu, Zhiwei
2024. Towards a corpus-based approach to graphic elements in creative subtitling. Babel. Revue internationale de la traduction / International Journal of Translation / Revista Internacional de Traducción 70:1-2 ► pp. 138 ff. DOI logo
Schaeffer‐Lacroix, Eva
2021. Integrating corpus‐based audio description tasks into an intermediate‐level German course. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 31:2 ► pp. 173 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 5 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.