Room 3, Building R

Fan translating the mods: a sociological gaze into the fan translation practices in The Elder Scrolls Skyrim mods in Turkey context

Selahattin Karagöz

The purpose of this paper is to review the relationship between game mods and translation. Drawing data from the netnographic evidence on fan translation practices in The Elder Scrolls Skyrim Mods in Turkish, I argue that unsolicited fan translation practices (O’Hagan, 2009) by the fan base offer a sustainable consumption environment for them. 

Game modifications, labeled “digital artefacts that avid gamers design by tinkering with their favorite games” (Sotamaa 2010) may be classified as instrumental or expressive mods of player productivity (Wirman, 2009). In any case, game mods critically affect or shape the gaming experience. Thus, focusing lenses on the translation of mods may unravel the mysteries of the interwoven relationship between game modifications and translation practices.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (TES) is a telling example of fan-driven translating practices in the game mods. The best-selling title by Bethesda Game Studios is an accomplished role-playing first-person game with a Metacritic score of 94/100. TES is also characterized by modding, and it is among the most prominent titles to provide a modding kit (The Creation Kit) to cultivate player productivity, which leads to numerous mods created by the gaming community. The game also has an active fan base in Turkey, gathered on Elder Scrolls Turkiye, the virtual community of practice of knowledge, and Steam Workshop Elder Scrolls threads. The community is involved in numerous forms of fan productivity on Elder Scrolls including creating, sharing, and translating mods. The mods created by fans are distributed and promoted through Elder Scrolls Turkiye and Nexus Mods, the sharing platform for game mods. The users also discuss, promote, or approve- disapprove the mods and their translation on the comments, posts, and threads on the space provided by the virtual community and Nexus Mods. This paper analyzes the 821 threads on the translation of mods on Nexus Mods, posts on mod translations in Elder Scrolls Türkiye, and threads on Steam Workshop to outline these practices in detail. 

Empirical evidence of netnographic analysis implies that the fan production in the gaming fan base and gaming community offers a sustainable cycle of mod translation in which fan translation of mods by self-assigned fan translators has been framed by how-to guides, technical documentation, and mod patch production threads by the community; the fan translation practices in mods include self-translation by the modders or language patch production by the community and the translation of mods have been distributed on a cross-platform principle including various fan translation web pages, fan translator youtube videos and streamer’s how to install videos. Thus, fan translation in mods is branded as a form of participatory production in a space of gaming culture and gaming consumption sphere. This space is defined as a field shaped by fannish production in Bourdieusian terms, thus, this paper also offers a sociological inquiry into non-commercial fan translation practices. 

In terms of this paper’s focus, I will briefly introduce the concept of modification, then define mods according to the translatorial burden they offer. Later, I will turn on to discuss The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim in the Turkish context; briefly outlining the communities, fan production, and fan translation in TES context. In a later section of this paper, I will investigate how fan translation practices shape the translation of mods and their circulation by the game base through lenses of the Bourdieusian concept of field. 

O’Hagan, Minako. 2009. Evolution of user-generated translation: fansubs, translation hacking and crowdsourcing. Journal of Internationalisation and Localisation. 1, 94–121. 

Sotamaa Olli. 2010. When the game is not enough: Motivations and practices among computer game modding culture. Games and Culture, 5(3):239-255. doi:10.1177/1555412009359765 

Wirman, Hanna. 2009. On productivity and game fandom. Transformative Works and Cultures, 3. https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2009.0145.

Selahattin Karagöz is currently working as a research assistant of Translation and Interpreting Studies at Ege University, İzmir, Turkey. He obtained his M.A. with his dissertation “ A Systematic Approach to Translation of Horror Literature into Turkish: Howard Phillips Lovecraft in Turkish” from İstanbul University School of Social Science, Translation Studies M.A.  Program in 2012. He received his Ph.D. from “Interlanguages and Cultures Translation Studies Program”  of Yıldız Technical University School of Social Sciences in 2019 with his dissertation “Amateurs, Experts, Explorers: Video Game Localization Practices in Turkey”. His research interests cover game localization, translation sociology, production studies and labour in virtual communities.

The socio-digital dynamics of non-professional subtitling on social media in Saudi Arabia: the case of social media fansubbing on Twitter.

Bandar Altalidi

This paper explores the social engagement of Saudi (fan)subtitlers or fansubbers and how they have harnessed social media to actively report global news and use it to support their ideologies. It is argued that due to the lack of robust news coverage by national and private TV and media in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), fansubbers have reported and exchanged news by subtitling short clips and posting them on social media. Not only do they simply (co)produce audiovisual content and share it online, but they address and engage with current (inter)national discourse and trending events through subtitling relevant clips. Taking into consideration the eco-political and socio-cultural events that happened in the last five years in Saudi Arabia, Twitter has offered these ‘consumers-turned-producers’ (Pérez-González, 2014, p. 61) a suitable platform for citizen journalism and social activism. Such events of regional tension between KSA and other countries, such as Iran and Qatar, along with the outbreak of Covid-19, all these incidents have been widely covered and promoted by Saudi fansubbers’ ‘user-generated translation’ (Desjardin, 2017, p.21). For the purpose of developing a profound understanding of the socio-cultural dynamics and intricacies of fansubbing in social media in KSA, 17 fansubbers are selected to be the primary source of data and study. Through the analysis of these fansubbers’ subtitled clips posted on Twitter and their online profiles, the paper also provides a detailed analysis of the digital paratexts (Batchelor, 2018) that relate to these clips and tweets. The importance of such paratextual and observational research lies in the insight it provides to perceive the motivations of these fansubbers and benefits secured or forms of capital accumulated (Bourdieu 1984; 1990) through their increased visibility and social engagement in social media platforms in the context of KSA.

Bandar Altalidi (presenter) is a PhD researcher at Cardiff University, translator and lecturer at King Khalid University, Saudi Arabia.

The evolution of informal audiovisual translation in China

Dingkun Wang

The economic reopening in 1978 brought China back into global media flows in the midst of industry and social transformations. As the broadcasting and exhibition venues, media and technologies evolve and multiply, the Chinese audience can access superabundant audiovisual programmes created domestically and abroad. Audiovisual translation (AVT) is indispensable to their viewing experiences and acquisition of global screen cultures. Despite this, previous research mostly focused on the historical evolution of formal translation, which are endorsed by the domestic authorities and transnational distributors, but rarely acknowledge the crucial contribution of informal AVT. To fill this historiographical gap, the study narratises and examines the evolution of Chinese informal AVT in three stages: 1) the profit-driven analog media piracy; 2) the spread of fan audiovisual translation on the Internet; and 3) the rise of Chinese translation fandoms in the convergent mediascape. This study combines the archival and participatory action approaches to recover individual and shared cultural memories of informal AVT from a wide range of online and offline sources. Potential findings will illuminate: 1) the ways in which informal AVT sync the Chinese audience with transnational media flows; 2) the cultural and digital realms where translation functions as a key energiser to the proliferation of alternate screen cultures; and 3) the novel forms of transmedia engagement and intercultural mediation experimented by fan-translators and online participants more broadly. In doing so, this study aims to re-examine the complexity and diversity of informal AVT and its lasting impact on the intermediation between Chinese audiences and global entertainment media in a changing world.

Dingkun Wang (presenter) is a researcher at The University of Hong Kong. His research explores the convergence between formal and informal economies in Chinese-language audiovisual translation. His further research interests include Chinese fan cultures, transmedia creativity, and digital transaction.

Collaboration and communication in fansubbing and industry subtitling: a human-centred study of subtitlers in two French subtitling production networks

Sevita Caseres

The French audiovisual translation industry is a special context to analyse considering the particular authorship status for translators – a unique perspective that is rarely investigated in the current literature despite its potential for broader discussions about the evolution of the profession and working conditions in the industry. This project examines English-French subtitling in two different contexts: non-professional subtitling in a French fansubbing community and industry subtitling with seven subtitlers located in Paris and affiliated to ATAA, the association for audiovisual translators in France. This presentation shares the results of my doctoral dissertation by bringing together subtitling process research and collaboration in translation to offer an up-to-date understanding of collaboration and communication in some of the current diverse workflows of the French subtitling industry. In this constantly evolving landscape, both production networks have experienced shifts in practices, developed a strong sense of community, and impacted one another. Therefore, the fansubbing and industry production networks have each been analysed through the concept of communities of practice (Wenger, 1998), which has proven to be valuable in the analysis of networks in translation studies (Cadwell et al., 2022). The fansubbing community was studied through online ethnography, also known as netnography (Kozinets, 2015). Practices in the professional community were studied through 14 interviews carried out with seven subtitlers working for cinema and video on demand (VOD) platforms. Each subtitler participated in two interviews, and direct non-participant observation of their workday. Placing the human translator at the centre of the research provided important insights into current work practices, habits, as well as the evolving workflow. The subtitlers’ role in the production network was analysed through the examination of their communication and collaboration with fellow subtitlers or other agents in the production network. This allowed defining patterns and variations in the functioning of their workflow according to the distribution medium of their subtitles. Building on these diverse collection methods and angles of analysis, this study examines how French subtitlers communicate, exchange ideas, and collaborate amongst themselves and with other stakeholders in the process. This allows for a deeper understanding of the evolution of French fansubbing, as well as the current evolving reality of the role and tasks in the professional subtitling industry, notably highlighting the shift towards cloud subtitling. Collaborative practices have often been analysed in online translation communities (Jiménez-Crespo, 2017; O’Hagan, 2011; Orrego-Carmona, 2016). However, despite an expanding interest in professional subtitling production networks (Abdallah, 2011, 2012; Díaz-Cintas & Remael, 2021; Kuo, 2015) and subtitling process research (Beuchert, 2017; Orrego-Carmona et al., 2018), little attention has been given to the specificities of industry work practices, communication and collaboration in translation (Alfer, 2017; Zwischenberger, 2020) and even less in the audiovisual translation industry (Artegiani, 2021; Silvester, 2021; Zanotti, 2020). This human-centred analysis thus seeks to delineate and compare different aspects of French subtitling environments. The examination of these practices, processes, and working conditions in such a particular context provides a deeper understanding of the subtitlers’ role in different communities and their impacts on one another. 

Abdallah, K. (2011). Quality Problems in AVT Production Networks: Reconstructing an Actor-network in the Subtitling Industry. In A. Matamala, A. Serban, & J.-M. Lavaur (Eds.), Audiovisual Translation in Close-up: Practical and Theoretical Approaches (pp. 173–186). Peter Lang. 

Abdallah, K. (2012). Translators in production networks: Reflections on agency, quality and ethics [Doctoral dissertation]. University of Eastern Finland. 

Alfer, A. (2017). Entering the Translab: Translation as collaboration, collaboration as translation, and the third space of ‘translaboration’. Translation and Translanguaging in Multilingual Contexts, 3(3), 275–290. https://doi.org/10.1075/ttmc.3.3.01alf 

Artegiani, I. (2021). Communication and interactions in cloud platform subtitling. Tradumàtica: Tecnologies de La Traducció, 19, 76–92. https://doi.org/10.5565/rev/tradumatica.282 

Beuchert, K. (2017). The Web of Subtitling. A Subtitling Process Model Based on a Mixed Methods Study of the Danish Subtitling Industry and the Subtitling Processes of Five Danish Subtitlers [Doctoral dissertation]. Aarhus BSS Aarhus University Department of Management. 

Cadwell, P., Federici, F. M., & O’Brien, S. (2022). Communities of practice and translation: An introduction. The Journal of Specialised Translation, 37, 2–15. 

Díaz-Cintas, J., & Remael, A. (2021). Subtitling: Concepts and Practices. Routledge. 

Jiménez-Crespo, M. A. (2017). Crowdsourcing and Online Collaborative Translations: Expanding the limits of Translation Studies. In Btl.131. John Benjamins Publishing Company. https://benjamins.com/catalog/btl.131 

Kozinets, R. V. (2015). Netnography: Redefined (2nd edition). SAGE Publications. 

Kuo, A. S.-Y. (2015). Professional Realities of the Subtitling Industry: The Subtitlers’ Perspective. In R. Baños Piñero & J. Díaz Cintas (Eds.), Audiovisual Translation in a Global Context (pp. 163–191). Palgrave Macmillan UK. 

O’Hagan, M. (2011). Community Translation: Translation as a social activity and its possible consequences in the advent of Web 2.0 and beyond. 

Orrego-Carmona, D. (2016). Internal structures and workflows in collaborative subtitling. In R. Antonini & C. Bucaria (Eds.), Non-professional Interpreting and Translation in the Media. Peter Lang. 

Orrego-Carmona, D., Szarkowska, A., & Dutka, Ł. (2018). Using translation process research to explore the creation of subtitles: An eye-tracking study comparing professional and trainee subtitlers. The Journal of Specialised Translation, 30, 150–180. 

Silvester, H. (2021). Working conditions and collaborative practices in the translation of French film: Subtitling banlieue cinema. Perspectives, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/0907676X.2021.1903517 

Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge University Press. 

Zanotti, S. (2020). Translaboration in a film context: Stanley Kubrick’s collaborative approach to translation. Target, 32(2), 217–238. https://doi.org/10.1075/target.20077.zan 

Zwischenberger, C. (2020). Translaboration: Exploring collaboration in translation and translation in collaboration. Target. International Journal of Translation Studies, 32(2), 173–190. https://doi.org/10.1075/target.20106.zwi

Sevita Caseres is a final year doctoral researcher at University College Cork, Ireland, where she also teaches Translation Studies and Audiovisual Translation at postgraduate level. She also teaches French at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. Sevita has previously obtained an MA in Translation and Specialised Multilingual Communication in French, German, and Spanish from the Faculty of Translation and Interpreting of the University of Geneva. Her research interests include professional and amateur subtitling practices, subtitling processes, subtitler working conditions, as well as collaboration in translation.

Censors, distributors and translators – three agents and their roles in film censorship during the Estado Novo regime in Portugal

Katrin Pieper

During the dictatorship in Portugal (1933-1974), foreign films were exposed to four possible types of censorship: the banning of a film, cuts, the suppression of subtitles and manipulation of the translation, carried out by censors, distributors and translators. These agents could act as individuals or groups; the distributor, for example, is usually a company and the censors are members of a board. And not all of them would have necessarily implemented the measures themselves. The censors, for example, issued the order for a scene to be cut but did not wield the scissors – a letter would probably have been sent by the secretary of the board of censors to inform the distributor of the censor’s decision, and the distributor would then delegate this task to a technician. The translator was usually the agent who altered the sense of the subtitles on his or her own initiative, in accordance with the prevailing ideology. However, if the manipulation was the result of following explicit instructions, it was no longer an act of self-censorship, but one link in a chain of agents and acts. It goes without saying that the agents would defend their different interests and perspectives on the foreign films, so their interaction was often a kind of negotiation. This presentation will demonstrate the different roles and responsibilities for censorship measures in the context of Portugal during the Estado Novo, illustrated by some examples found in the archived censorship documents.

Katrin Pieper studied Translation at Leipzig University and specialised in audiovisual translation. She started her professional career as a subtitler and later worked as a project manager for an international dubbing and subtitling company in Berlin. After moving to Portugal, she taught German at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at Coimbra University and currently holds a scholarship for her PhD thesis on censorship and subtitling during the dictatorship in Portugal. Her research interests include censorship and manipulation in audiovisual translation, as well as multimodality.

Social media posts, translation and the news: a multimodal approach

Miguel Ángel Jiménez-Crespo

During recent years, social networking platforms have become source of news in themselves (Broersma and Graham 2013). Reproducing tweets, Instagram or Facebook posts and-or their translations, often as exact quotes, has helped accelerate the global news cycle (Hermida 2012, 2016) and has become a global mainstream phenomenon (Guerrero 2020). They are used extensively in new forms of digital journalism such as digital newspapers, portals, multimedia hubs by news organizations, citizen journalism, blogs or news sections in search engines (Valdeón 2020). Social media posts are multimodal in nature, and this paper explores this multimodal nature and their translations through an analysis of the different strategies news outlets use to report on social media posts in an age of digital convergence (Davier and Conway 2019). The paper will offer a cline from purely textual to visual, aural and kinetic, and will explore the different possible rendering possibilities based on the affordances of each medium (printed paper, digital journalism, TV, etc.). In addition, social networks now include MT integrations that help seamlessly receive a gist translation of the source media post. As an example, Twitter has offered instant MT translations through Google NMT since 2015, while Facebook uses its own MT system since 2016. The paper will also explore the ways in which MT systems are used both in overt and covert ways (Jimenez-Crespo 2022) to report on social media posts in the media, from showing a screenshot directly of the source and target texts as shown in the platform to using in covert ways MT to render the textual content. All in all, the presentation will attempt to provide a foundation for future studies (multimodal corpora, discourse analysis, user reception, etc.) of the ever-growing social media presence in journalism.

Miguel Ángel Jiménez-Crespo holds a PhD in Translation and Interpreting Studies from the University of Granada, Spain. He is a Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Rutgers University, and he directs the Masters program and the undergraduate certificate in Spanish – English Translation and Interpreting.  He is the author of  Crowdsourcing and Online Collaborative Translations: Expanding the Limits of Translation Studies published by John Benjamins in 2017, as well as Translation and Web Localization published by Routledge  in 2013.

​

“The unknown heroes of the silver screen”: film translators in the late silent era

Serenella Zanotti

The aim of this paper is to examine the emergence of film translation as a profession in Italy in the late silent era. Using contemporary periodicals, censorship records and archival material, this paper will examine the intricacies and complexities of the film translator’s craft, in which technology played a significant role. As previous studies have shown, translating films in the 1920s entailed much more than translating words (Nornes 2007) – it was a far more radical and material process of creatively re-shaping and adapting the film text to meet the requirements of local audiences, exhibitors, and censorship boards (Vasey 1997). Silent film translation was “a holistic process” (O’Sullivan and Cornu 2018: 16) involving not only the translation of title cards, but also a variety of operations ranging from film re-editing to the creation of paratexts such as film novelizations, to more radical reworkings. Drawing on a range of primary sources, this paper will investigate the work and modus operandi of film translators between the late 1920s and the early 1930s, with the aim of uncovering elements of continuity in film translation practices from the last decade of silent cinema to the early days of dubbing. The discourse around film translation will be examined, with a view to illuminating terminological aspects, film translators’ socio-cultural background, as well as the public image and the legal status of the profession.

Serenella Zanotti is Associate Professor of English and Translation Studies at the University of Rome III, Italy. Her main research interests are in the area of Translation Studies, with a focus on film translation history and translation archives. She has published extensively on topics ranging from audiovisual translation to cross-cultural pragmatics, translingualism and feminist translation theories. Her most recent work centres on Stanley Kubrick. Other recent projects deal with film translation in the late silent era and the early 1930s. Among her publications are two monographs on James Joyce and numerous edited volumes including, among others, 'Linguistic and Cultural Representation in Audiovisual Translation' (Routledge, 2018), 'Reassessing Dubbing: Historical Approaches and Current Trends' (Benjamins, 2019), and 'English in Audiovisual Translation Research: Synchronic and Diachronic Perspectives' (Textus, 2021). She is a member of the ITEM research group on ‘Multilinguisme, Traduction, Création’ (Paris).

Trust and mistrust in health and climate change communication: a cross-national comparative study.

Valentina Ragni, Susana Valdez, Bei Hu

In culturally and linguistically diverse countries, the use of professional translators and interpreters has proved essential in health communication (White et al. 2018). When professional translation is not available, translation technologies such as machine translation (MT) have been deployed (Cadwell et al. 2019). However, research on how health communication is integrated with such technologies is still scarce (Brisset et al. 2013). Efficiently sharing scientific health information to change public behaviour has become a recognised benchmark for quality healthcare (Bensing et al. 2001). One major issue is that technology-enabled health communication for behaviour-change purposes can be affected by end-users' trust (or lack thereof) in translation technologies. Adopting a cross-national comparative approach, this study explores the issue of trust/mistrust in machine-assisted subtitle translation, using health and climate change communication (HCCC) as a case study. Participants are Chinese, Italian and Portuguese native speakers living in Singapore, Poland and the Netherlands. Adapting Rossetti et al.’s (2020) methodology, participants are presented with four subtitled videos (e.g. from the World Health Organization) dealing with topics at the intersection of health and climate change, and subtitled into their native languages, followed by a survey with questions on their perception of trust/mistrust and behaviour-change, as well as on usage and beliefs regarding translation technologies, including MT. The design involves four scenarios. In the first, participants are shown human-translated subtitles and are not told the provenience of the translation. In the second, they are shown light-post-edited machine-translated subtitles and are also not told the provenience of the translation. In the third, they are shown human-translated subtitles but are told that they are machine-translated. In the fourth, they are shown light-post-edited machine-translated subtitles but are told that they are human-translated. The aim is to understand if MT, and awareness thereof, have an impact on trust and reported behaviour-change in HCCC. This paper will review relevant literature on trust in translation, describe the study methodology, present same preliminary results, and contextualise the study within the broader frameworks of trust, MT and translation in HCCC. Building upon previous research, this study contributes to creating a fuller picture of trust issues in machine-assisted translation. 

Bensing, J., van Dulmen, S., Kallerup, H. et al. (2001). The European Association for Communication in Healthcare. Patient Education and Counseling 43: pp.1–4. 

Brisset, C., Leanza,Y., & Laforest, K. (2013). Working with interpreters in health care: A systematic review and meta-ethnography of qualitative studies. Patient Education and Counseling 91: pp.131–140. 

Cadwell, P., O'Brien, S., & DeLuca, E. (2019). More than Tweets: A Critical Reflection on Developing and Testing Crisis Machine Translation Technology. Translation Spaces, 8(2): pp.300–333. 

Rossetti, A., O’Brien, S., & Cadwell, P. (2020). Comprehension and Trust in Crises: Investigating the Impact of Machine Translation and Post-Editing. Proceedings of the 22nd Annual Conference of the European Association for Machine Translation, 2: pp.9–18. 

White, J., Plompen, T., Osadnik, C. et al. (2018). The Experience of Interpreter Access and Language Discordant Clinical Encounters in Australian Health Care: A Mixed Methods Exploration. International Journal for Equity in Health 17, 151.

Valentina Ragni (presenter) is currently a Research Fellow based at the University of Warsaw (Poland). She has a PhD in Translation Studies from the University of Leeds, where she used eye-tracking technology to investigate the effects of watching subtitled videos on memory in advanced foreign language learners. Before Poland, she worked at the University of Bristol on a project assessing the impact of productivity-enhancing technologies – such as machine translation and behaviour-tracking tools – on professional translators. She is particularly interested in the cognitive and psychological aspects of translation, both as a learning tool and as a professional practice. She is a member of Subtle – The Subtitlers’ Association (UK), the UK Institute of Translation and Interpreting (ITI), and the European Society for Translation Studies (EST). 

Susana Valdez (presenter) is an Assistant Professor in Translation Studies at Leiden University. Before taking up her current position, she had spent 15 years working in the translation industry, and she was an invited lecturer at NOVA School of Social Sciences and Humanities, as well as Lisbon University School of Arts and Humanities (Lisbon, Portugal). Her doctoral thesis focused on medical translation. Her current research focuses on pivot templates, medical translation, the translation process, and reception. She is the PI of the ApiVoT project, the Reviews editor and member of the Editorial Board of JAT - Journal of Audiovisual Translation, and co-editor of a special issue on pivot audiovisual translation (Perspectives 2023, with Hanna Pięta, Hanna, Rita Menezes and Stravoula Sokoli). 

Bei Hu (presenter) is an Assistant Professor of Translation and Interpreting Studies in the Department of Chinese Studies at the National University of Singapore. She received her doctoral degree in translation studies from the University of Melbourne, Australia. Her research area revolves around reception research on translation and interpreting, focusing on ethical issues in high-stakes intercultural communication.

The 2022 procession of the holy blood in Bruges with audio description, Flemish sign language and subtitling in the faro heritage app

Susanne Verberk

Each year on Ascension Day, the Procession of the Holy Blood passes through the streets of Bruges, attracting some 40,000 spectators. More than 1,700 participants sing, play music, dance and act as they move through the historic city centre. The procession is over 700 years old and is included on UNESCO’s List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. In 2013, live audio description (AD) of the procession was provided for the first time. Visitors with low vision could buy tickets for a designated area where they could pick up the live AD signal with a headset. There were no specific arrangements for deaf and hard-of-hearing spectators. In 2022, after two cancelled editions due to Covid, the procession could finally be held again. On 26 May 2022, spectators not only marvelled at 750 costumes that had been updated, they also saw a procession that had been made much more accessible. In fact, the procession now had an audio guide with pre-recorded audio description, as well as a video guide with Flemish Sign Language and subtitles. Preparations for the added accessibility features began in 2021, when the organisation consulted members of the visually impaired as well as the deaf and hard-of-hearing community to better understand what their specific needs and wishes were. Later, accessibility experts were consulted in order to determine how best to cater to these needs. As a result, the choice was made to provide pre-recorded instead of live AD, so people were no longer limited to a specific area where they could listen to the descriptions. The same goes for the sign language interpretation and subtitles: these too were to be made beforehand, so people could watch the procession at any spot along the route, rather than at an interpreting and subtitling point. However, it turned out to be quite a challenge to get the audio and video fragments to the end users. The solution the team came up with was probably a first in Europe, and perhaps even worldwide. Beacons were mounted on artefacts that the groups carried, and sent out their signals to users’ smartphones. The users only needed to install the FARO Heritage app, which hosted both guides, and activate their Bluetooth function. Once the beacons came within reach of the smartphones, the guide would automatically play the corresponding audio or video file. Beacon technology has been used in museums and outdoor settings for some time now. The beacons are attached to fixed elements, and users pick up their signal as they move along. For this procession, the order was inverted: it was the beacons that moved and the audience that remained in the same place. In my presentation, I will elaborate on the how and why behind this solution. I will also discuss possible pitfalls and give an overview of new developments within the project: in the 2023 edition of the procession English AD and subtitles were added, as well as International Sign, and more languages will follow in the future.

Susanne Verberk (MA) has been working in the (audiovisual) translation industry since 1998. She writes audio descriptions for recording studios, as well as scripts that are delivered in a live setting. Susanne founded her own company, called Nevero, in 2007. Nevero is a language services company that aims to make art and culture, in the broadest sense, accessible to those who cannot see (well). We do this using audio description. For more information: https://nevero.be/en/home/.

Accessing the archive: end users as media accessibility service providers

Sarah Anne McDonagh, Laura Aguiar

As the digitalisation of archival material continues to grow, accessibility to important historical records is a pressing concern for the heritage sector. Traditionally, trained professionals have provided transcriptions of archival material. This article presents a new initiative in Northern Ireland in which a group of blind and partially blind people were invited to work on transcriptions of archival material from the Public Records Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) [1] as part of the CollabArchive project [2]. Four participants with varying degrees of blindness were trained to transcribe audio and audiovisual material from PRONI’s collection. This presentation will introduce the project, its aims and methodology after which it will describe the ways in which volunteers transcribed the archival material and what barriers they faced in carrying out their work. Finally, this presentation will locate this initiative within the wider field of participatory accessibility (Di Giovanni 2018), highlighting the evolving role of the end user, moving beyond the role of consumer to producer of accessible content. End notes [1] Public Records Office of Northern Ireland: https://www.nidirect.gov.uk/campaigns/public-record-office-northern-ireland-proni [accessed 23 August 2022]. [2] CollabArchive is a digital volunteer project from the Nerve Centre, in partnership with the Public Records Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI), that creates unique digital volunteering opportunities for the public to engage with archives. 

 CollabArchive: https://collabarchive.org/about [accessed 23 August 2022]. 

 Di Giovanni, Elena. 2018. ‘Participatory Accessibility: Creating Audio Description with Blind and Non-Blind Children’, Journal of Audiovisual Translation, 1.1: 155–69

Dr Sarah Anne McDonagh (presenter) is a postdoctoral researcher in the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona where she works on the H2020 research project GreenSCENT (Smart Citizen Engagement for a Green Future), working as part of an international team to engage people with environmental issues in their local area through the development of accessible applications and digital platforms. Sarah holds a PhD from Queen's University Belfast in Northern Ireland.  She has experience working with the digital archive The Prisons Memory Archive in Northern Ireland to create descriptive guides of the controversial prison of the Maze and Long Kesh. Sarah’s principal research interests are in media accessibility, particularly subjects related to accessibility of digital heritage and sustainability. 

Dr. Laura Aguiar (co-author) is a multimedia content creator and educator with over 10 years of experience in the education, heritage and arts sectors. Her practice-based research focuses on making history, art, and heritage more accessible and engaging through participatory creative projects in Northern Ireland. She is particularly interested in participatory approaches to storytelling and community engagement and how this can benefit individuals, organisations, and society on a number of levels (mental health, skills building, resourcing, accessibility, diversity, and community relations). As a multimedia content creator, Laura has a produced a body of work ranging from documentary films, VR films to interactive websites and exhibitions. As an educator, Laura has delivered 35 community engagement programmes and has published a number of articles and chapters on participatory storytelling over the last 10 years. Laura is the co-founder and co-director of the Rathmullan Film Festival, a participatory film festival based in a rural village in county Donegal, northwest of Ireland. By actively involving locals from all ages in film programming, event management and filmmaking projects, Laura has helped the festival grow since its first edition in 2018. To date, six festival programmes have been delivered, over 40 films have been made by locals and over five thousand people have visited the festival (in person and virtually), establishing Rathmullan within the Irish film festival circuit. She holds a BA in Journalism (Fumec University), MA in Media and Communication (Stockholm University), and a PhD in Film Studies (Queen’s University Belfast).

Extended audio description – too much or not enough?

Marta Żaczkiewicz, Anna Jankowska

The European Union’s Directive on the Accessibility of Websites and Mobile Devices requires that the websites of the public bodies of Member States comply with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). In practice, this means that all multimedia should be presented with recorded audio description. Short films, such as trailers, advertisements, and promotional films are generally a series of fast moving shots, providing plenty of visual stimuli. For sighted people, it is an attractive form of media, but for blind persons, one of the most inaccessible forms of audiovisual production. Since those short films are not born accessible and often have no natural pauses where audio description could be inserted, they are made accessible via extended audio description, which involves re-editing a film and inserting several seconds’ of freeze-frames. Audio description of short multimedia has not yet received much attention, however results of a recent study suggest that as long as the audio message of the main narrator provides enough information for the end-users to exhaustively understand the context of a film, the additional audio description of visual images is not necessarily needed and at times might even disturb the target audience. Those results support my professional experience as an audio describer and accessibility expert which made me realize that extended audio description not only prolongs a film, interferes with the author's vision, since an advert is convincing and remains vivid only when it is short. But most importantly it does not always serve the purpose of accessibility. In my presentation, I will present results of a reception study carried out with visually impaired persons. In two focus-group interviews we have discussed their needs and opinions regarding the use of extended audio description for short videos. Results lead me to a conclusion that indeed, extended audio description does not always meet the needs of the target audiences. This, combined with my observations as accessibility facilitator bring me to a conclusion that making a film accessible at all costs is senseless, as it is not economical, and that good, intelligent promotional films should be created taking into consideration the various recipients, including the blind ones, from the very beginning of production, supporting the need on a wider implementation of the accessible filmmaking approach.

Marta Żaczkiewicz (presenter) Audio-visual translation studies graduate. From 2010, professionally active in the field of access services (audio description, and subtitles for the deaf and Hard of Hearing). Provided the Transatlantyk & HumanDoc (Poland), and Listapad (Belarus) film festivals with AD and subtitles for the deaf. Supervised the introduction of audio description at a number of organisations, including the Mark Chagall Museum in Witebsk, the International Museum in Minsk, the Archeological Museum in Poland, and Poznan Zoo in Poland. Cooperates with TV stations, and companies from the film industry and theatres. Acts for the benefit of people with sensory disabilities who are at risk of social exclusion. A certified instructor of spatial orientation and safe movement of people with sight loss. Foundress and President of the Open Culture Open Art Foundation. 

Anna Jankowska is a AVT & MA researcher, trainer and consultant, former audio describer and access manager. She is now a research professor at of University of Antwerp. She is the founder and was the CEO of the Seventh Sense Foundation which provided access services in Poland. Her recent research projects include studies on audio description process, mobile accessibility and software.

Seeing things as they are – the audio describer’s obligation

Joel Snyder

NOTE: This abstract is based on more than four decades of experience as a professional audio describer for the performing arts, media, and museums. The proposed paper in based on my practice and perspective in the field including close work with hundreds of audio description patrons. It does not follow a traditional research model but is rather a viewpoint developed out of extensive practical work in audio description. According to dictionary.com, “[Something that is ] Subjectivity [emphasis added] most commonly [is] … based on the personal perspective or preferences of a person. … Objectivity [emphasis added] … most commonly [is] … not influenced by or based on a personal viewpoint—based on the analysis of an object of observation only.” In philosophy, the notion of subjectivity specifically relates to an object as it exists in the mind, as opposed to the thing as it exists in reality (the thing in itself). Objectivity is unbiased – or at least involves the attempt to be unbiased. An objective perception avoids a person’s own feelings or views—it focuses on facts. Traditional journalists are trained to be as objective as possible when reporting—to leave their opinions out of their reports and record or present the observed facts. But, of course, it must be acknowledged that all perception relies on one’s own mind, so the perception of a thing is ultimately subjective. The diarist Anais Nin notes that “We don’t see things as they are; we see them as we are. Still—the job of the audio describer is to make that good faith attempt to offer description that is free from a subjective interpretation on the part of the describer. This notion is a fundamental of audio description developed in 1981 at the world’s first audio description service at The Washington Ear, a radio reading service based in Washington, DC, USA. I was honored to have been a part of that service. Dr. Margaret Pfanstiehl, a blind woman and founder of The Ear, often said that “The best audio describer is sometimes referred to as a ‘verbal camera lens,’ objectively recounting the visual.” Qualitative judgments get in the way—they constitute a subjective interpretation on the part of the describer and are unnecessary and unwanted. "What You See Is What You Say” (WYSIWYS) became the audio describer's mantra. The idea is to let listeners conjure their own interpretations based on a commentary that is as objective as possible. For instance, how would you describe this: [clench fist, grimace, stomp foot] In other words, you don't say "He is furious" or "She is upset." Rather, "He's clenching his fist" or "She is crying." Again, the idea is to let the audience make their own judgments—perhaps their eyes don’t work so well, but their brains and interpretative skills are intact. In order to be most effective as describers, we become language artists ourselves to a certain extent—if we want our visitors to truly experience our facilities, our exhibits, our media projects, or our performances. I’ve talked about objectivity—but remember Walter Lippman’s remark regarding our own perspectives and “where we stand”? [“What we see depends on where we stand ... and the habits of our eyes.”] Absolute objectivity doesn’t exist! The image is created in the minds of our constituents. Still, we strive to avoid labeling with overly subjective interpretations and let our visitors conjure their own images and interpretations, as free as possible from the “habits of our eyes.” Paul Valery: “Seeing is forgetting the name of the thing one sees.” There is no specific, objective thing — names lead us to pigeon-hole and we then dismiss the thing we see. WYSIWYS In the words of John Ruskin, we must “Seize what we see.” And convey our descriptions with a kind of inner vision that results in a linguistically vivid evocation of the scene being viewed. Ironically, it allows us to use our imagination to describe in ways that will conjure more accurate images. In other words, there aren’t any “elephants” on the grounds of the Washington Monument in Washington, DC— but you may evoke them (50 of them, one atop the other!) in order to convey the height of the Washington Monument. Which leads to the question: Does vision depend on sight? Jonathan Swift said, “Vision is the art of seeing things invisible.” Read “A Story”—attached.

Greyson, Max. 2020. Workbook ArtInAD. Tools for artistic integration of audio description in contemporary dance and music theatre. https://un-label.eu/wp-content/uploads/Workbook-Tools-and-Methods-PDF-ENG.pdf 

 Romero-Fresco, Paolo and Louise Fryer. 2018. Accessible Filmmaking Guide, London: British Film Institute. https://accessiblefilmmaking.wordpress.com/ 

Sealey, Jenny, and Carissa Hope Lynch. 2012. ‘Graeae: An Aesthetic of Access – (De)Cluttering the Clutter’. Broadhurst, Susan/Machon, Josephine (eds.): Identity, Performance, and Technology. Practices of Empowerment and Technicity. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 60–73. 

Smith, Henry F. 1999. ‘Subjectivity and Objectivity in Analytic Listening’. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 47 (2): 465–84. https://doi.org/10.1177/00030651990470022101 

Soler Gallego, Silvia. 2019. ‘Defining subjectivity in visual art audio description’. Meta: Journal des traducteurs 64 (3): 708–33. https://doi.org/10.7202/1070536ar 

Snyder, Joel. 2014. ‘The Visual Made Verbal: A Comprehensive Training Manual and Guide to the History and Applications of Audio Description’. American Council of the Blind.

Joel Snyder, PhD (presenter) is known internationally as one of the world’s first “audio describers,” a pioneer in the field of Audio Description. Since 1981, he has introduced audio description techniques in over 40 states and 64 countries and has made thousands of live events, media projects and museums accessible.  Most recently, Dr. Snyder was named a Fulbright Scholar to train audio describers in Greece over a four-week period. In 2014, the American Council of the Blind published Dr. Snyder’s book, The Visual Made Verbal – A Comprehensive Training Manual and Guide to the History and Applications of Audio Description, now available in Braille, as an audio book, and in print editions in English, Spanish, Portuguese, Polish, Russian, and Chinese; an Italian edition will be published in Italian in fall 2023.