Audio Description Technology: Enhancing Communication of Culture-Bound Elements in Films

Abstract

Audio description (AD) technology, as a means of audiovisual translation (AVT), provides media accessibility (MA) for blind and partially sighted audiences. Through this innovative technology, the audio describer engages in real-time communication and gives a running commentary on the visual elements that are seen on the screen. The intersection of communication and technology in translation as reflected in how culture-bound elements are addressed in AVT has lately gained increasing attention. This phenomenological research aims to describe the solutions audio describers resort to for the rendition of culture-bound elements in Anglophone films into Persian. The audio descriptions of four Persian-dubbed English-language films were purposively selected as the sample corpus. The findings revealed that communication-centric strategies of specification, naming, and retention are, respectively, the most applied in the process of communicating the English culture-bound elements across the target culture by the audio describers. The implications of the findings for practice and theory are discussed.