Reading rate in filmic audio description

The study discussed in this article was carried out as a pilot study to assess the process, resources and data management scheme (Thabane et al., 2010) to be used in a large-scale experiment on filmic audio description (AD) reading rate. As part of this study we defined the reading rate in filmic AD context. We described the characteristic features of Polish filmic AD scripts and recordings and examined the reading rate of Polish AD for three Polish fiction films: a comedy, a drama, and an action film. We calculated the average length of breath pauses and the maximum, minimum and average reading rate measured in characters per second (CPS) and words per minute (WPM) – two measures commonly used in audiovisual translation. The main finding of this study is the validation of the research procedure for testing the AD reading rate. We also computed the average reading rate for Polish filmic AD (179 WPM) and discovered that it changes depending on the film genre (167 WP for drama, 182 for comedy and 189 for action). When it comes to breath pauses in Polish AD, we calculated their average length at 190 ms – a value much lower than expected for breath pauses in Polish. The results of our study are discussed in the context of research on the speech tempo