A Narratological Approach to Content Selection in Audio Description

A Narratological Approach to Content Selection in Audio Description Gert Vercauteren Proefschrift voorgelegd tot het behalen van de graad van doctor in de vertaalwetenschap aan de Universiteit Antwerpen Promotoren Prof. Dr. Aline Remael – Universiteit Antwerpen Prof. Dr. Tom Paulus – Universiteit Antwerpen Faculteit Letteren en Wijsbegeerte Toegepaste Taalkunde / Vertalers en Tolken Antwerpen, 2016 Copyright © 2016 – Gert Vercauteren Copyright Artwork Cover © 2012-2016 – tra123 (www.deviantart.com) A Narratological Approach to Content Selection in Audio Description Gert Vercauteren Proefschrift voorgelegd tot het behalen van de graad van doctor in de vertaalwetenschap aan de Universiteit Antwerpen Promotoren Prof. Dr. Aline Remael – Universiteit Antwerpen Prof. Dr. Tom Paulus – Universiteit Antwerpen Für Elise Thibaut Stephanie Acknowledgements 6 June 2005. As the first rays of sunlight start to warm the air, a young man, dressed in a white short-sleeved shirt and a pair of blue jeans, walks through a barren landscape strewn with a few isolated shrubs. The man, who is in his twenties, takes off his sunglasses. He looks to his left, then to his right. From his briefcase he takes a small map and turns it in various directions before continuing along his way… hesitatingly, as if lost. This is not the audio description of the opening of the new Quentin Tarantino film or of an episode of a fiction series set somewhere in Mexico. No, it is the beginning of another intriguing and fascinating journey—marked with countless hesitations where the protagonist seemed lost—the story of my PhD. And I am quite certain that I would not have made it to the end of that journey without the inspiration, help and support of a number of fellow travellers. The story began on 6 June 2005, on the UAB campus in Barcelona during the first international Media for All conference on Audiovisual Translation. I had been looking for a suitable topic for a PhD for quite a while, but it was not until I heard the very inspiring talk that Joan Greening gave during that conference, that I knew what I wanted to do. Joan, who had been fighting for years in order to obtain more and better access to audiovisual products for visually impaired audiences, convinced me that audio description was a field where a PhD would not only have a purely academic value. A PhD on audio description could also serve a practical purpose and be of use to a growing part of the population that is still largely left to their own devices when they want to do what we all do: watch television or go to the cinema. I would therefore like to thank Joan for being that source of inspiration during the early years of my research. On that same day in June 2005 I met another person who I am most grateful to. The warm welcome I was given by Pilar Orero, one of the organisers of the conference, was symbolic of how young researchers are welcomed to the field of AVT research, where I immediately felt at home. Two years later, Pilar invited me to the first ARSAD seminar, a very enriching experience where I got acquainted with the practice of AD. Since then, I have worked with Pilar on various presentations, articles and research projects, and her unremitting enthusiasm has always proven and still proves to be very contagious. i Inspiration and enthusiasm are one thing, but writing this PhD was a very lengthy and difficult process. Difficult because I studied translation at a time when it was still mainly regarded as a professional training and students graduated without having taken any theoretical course whatsoever be that on translation studies, academic writing or doing research generally. Fortunately I had two supervisors who constantly kept watch over the relevance and quality of what I did and wrote, who regularly questioned my ideas, pointed out weaknesses in my research and pointed me to the right sources to improve my work. One of the many things I learned from them, is to look at research in two different and complementary ways, always keeping both the micro and the macro scale in focus. I want to sincerely thank Aline Remael for the various very painstaking readings of the different chapters of this work and the detailed and apropos remarks she made, and for making me go on whenever I thought of giving up. I also want to thank Tom Paulus for showing me that watching film is about much more than looking at images, and for always keeping an eye to the global and logical structure of this work. Without them, this work would certainly not have been what it is now. Nor would it have been without the support of many colleagues, both in Antwerp and abroad. I would like to thank Mary Carroll, Jorge Díaz Cintas, Anna Matamala, Josélia Neves, Aline Remael and Diana Sanchez from the Transmedia research group for inviting me to conduct workshops at the Media for All conferences in Antwerp and London. These were perfect opportunities to test parts of the approach developed in this work in practice and to collect valuable feedback to improve it. Likewise I would like to thank the different international partners involved in the EU funded ADLAB project, Chris Taylor and Elisa Perego from the University of Trieste, Pilar Orero and Anna Matamala from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Iwona Mazur and Agnieszka Chmiel from the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Haide Volz and Bernd Benecke from Bayerischer Rundfunk, and Selene Sordo from Senza Barriere. On the one hand, a lot of the research carried out within the framework of this project found its way into the present work. On the other hand, suggestions to integrate parts of the approach developed in this PhD in the European guidelines that were the final deliverable of the project, were warmly welcomed, critically evaluated and improved. Other international colleagues to who I owe thanks are Agnieszka Szarkowska who invited me as a guest lecturer to the University of Warsaw to test my approach in her classes and Louise Fryer, with whom I had many enriching discussions on my research. On the Belgian front, I need to thank the people at VRT, particularly Eric De Snerck, Ludo Schats and Geertje De Ceuleneer. All the audio described materials they provided me with have proved very valuable ii for the present work and will no doubt continue to be of great worth for further research. I also owe much gratitude to my colleagues of the Department of Applied Linguistics, Translation and Interpreting of the University of Antwerp, in particular Sabien Hanoulle, Kris Peeters, Nina Reviers, Isabelle Robert, Iris Schrijver and Jimmy Ureel. Their genuine interest certainly kept me motivated all these years. One person at our department whose help I particularly appreciated, is Jeroen Verschaeren. No book or article was too difficult for him to find and whenever I needed a bibliographical reference, I received a reply almost instantaneously. Now, with the end of the journey in sight, I am curious to know what others think of this work. I am convinced that it is a step forward in the field of AD research, but it is just one step that will hopefully lead to further developments. I would therefore already like to thank Anke Brouwers, Louise Fryer, Pilar Orero and Kris Peeters for taking the time to read this PhD and discuss its contents and avenues for further research with me later this year. Finally, a heartfelt thank you goes out to my family. To my parents, who taught me, from a very young age, the importance of languages and convinced me to pursue a study in translation. To Elise and Thibaut who, at times, did not get to see enough of their dad and no doubt oftentimes wondered whether I was re-writing or, worse, enacting The Never Ending Story. And last but definitely not least to my loving wife Stephanie, for always being there, for taking care of the kids when I was fighting with yet another chapter of this work, for lending me her shoulder or letting me rage when I was stuck once again. Without her, this work would simply never have existed. Gert Vercauteren Wuustwezel, 12 January 2016 iii Contents Introduction 1 Chapter 1 - Media accessibility from a social perspective 9 1. Accessibility of audiovisual products: media for all 9 2. What is audio description 10 3. The target audience of audio description 15 3.1. Main eye conditions and types of sight loss ................................................... 16 3.2. The size of the target audience ....................................................................... 18 3.3. The secondary target audience ....................................................................... 20 4. A concise history of audio description 21 4.1. The first wave ................................................................................................. 22 4.2. The rest of Europe .......................................................................................... 25 4.3. Audio description in Belgium and the Netherlands ........................................ 26 Chapter 2 - Media accessibility from an academic perspective 30 1. Audio description as a new field of research 30 1.1. The position of AVTS and AD in TS ............................................................. 30 1.2. TS concepts revisited ...................................................................................... 34 1.2.1 The concept of text in the age of the screen ................................................ 34 1.2.2 The concept of translation in the age of the audiovisual text...................... 39 1.2.3 The concept of equivalence

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