Audio describing foreign films

Abstract

This article presents the main challenges of audio describing foreign films: synchronising the translation of foreign language dialogue with audio description, identifying speakers, describing culture-bound elements, and dealing with intertextuality. The findings are discussed with a reference to an explorative study carried out among Polish viewers with visual impairments. The solutions proposed in this article include the name insertion strategy, audio introductions and a number of strategies to deal with culture-specific items in audio description, such as explicitation, naming, generalisation, specification, retention. The results of the study also demonstrate the feasibility of adopting the Translation Studies toolkit to the benefit of audio description.