Audio Describing Humour in the Chinese Context: A Creative and Collaborative Approach

Abstract

Audio description (AD) has seen rapid development internationally, including in China. But among the challenges that AD has yet to fully address is the difficulty of translating humorous content when AD principles have long focused on objectivity. The objective principle may conflict with comedy’s main goal of causing affective and physical responses in the viewer. There is evidence of user frustration with the inadequate handling of humour in AD. This study adopts a creative and collaborative AD approach that gives priority to the comedic value of the material. Using action research, the first author, taking the roles of researcher and audio describer, worked with comedy creators and visually impaired persons to co-produce AD for a comedy film fragment from Never Say Die. After the co-creation, a focus group discussion collected the co-creators’ post-reflections. The findings show that AD can be made more comic through various verbal techniques. However, such a comic AD needs careful review to avoid potential for causing offence. The collaborative working mode offers promising possibilities but also has drawbacks which must be carefully considered. Future collaborative AD will require more engagement from the media industry and the participation of visually impaired co-creators.