Film audio description

This entry begins with a general introduction to the multifaceted and interdisciplinary field of accessibility in (multimodal) translation, which has clearly become an intensely studied sub-discipline within Audiovisual Translation and Translation Studies in general. At the applied level, the sub-modalities of translation in this field (film audio description, museum audio description, subtitling for the deaf and hard-of-hearing and easy reading) have consolidated due to their increasing demand in countries with legislation which guarantee the right of access to information and communication for people with sensory (visual or auditory) or cognitive functional diversity. Secondly, this same entry includes a section on accessibility translation for blind people, and specifically, we will describe the translation sub-modality of Film Audio Description (FAD), one of the most researched in the field of accessibility to multimedia environments. FAD could be described as a translation practice specially intended for people who are blind or have low vision. It consists of a voice-over with certain narrative characteristics that is woven around the soundtrack of an audiovisual product (film, series, TV shows, etc.). It exploits the pauses to explain or describe the visual information of the original work, such as the action of the scene, the places and characters, their costumes, body language and facial expressions, with the aim of increasing the comprehension of the audiovisual text by the recipient with low vision and thus enabling them to follow the plot of the work. This section also displays several examples of practical issues, such as which elements are selected for the audio description process and how they are included into an audio description script. Research is dealt with both in the introductory section and in the section on film audio description. Lastly, reference is made to the lines of work which, in the short and medium term, we presume will experience greater growth, either because of the needs of the discipline or because of the research inertia observed to date