Towards a New Ethics of Audio Description: Re-creation as a Procedure

Authors

  • Marcelo Santos Faculdade Cásper Líbero

Keywords:

Audio Description, Translation Ethics, Sound Diagrams, Poetics

Abstract

Audio description (AD) is the act of providing blind and low vision people with a sound translation of visual and audiovisual communication programs, such as TV shows, artworks, or operas. This activity was formalized in the 1980s in the United States, using the model: “describe what you see.” In this model, the audio describer, wielding the controversial banner of “objectivity,” offers a supposedly impartial - and to some extent protocolized - reading of what he/she observes. The American school prospered and spread around the world, becoming the standard for AD, even in Brazil. However, by recovering the best Tupinikin tradition of “trans-creation” or “re-creation,” defended by the concrete poets, we raise, at least for the visual arts, another methodological/experimental proposal: using sound poetry diagrams to perform AD, a process known as intersemiotic translation. It is widely believed that the sensitive layer, which is significant in the arts, is often lost in the technicality of standardized AD, and that diagrammatic constructions, can perhaps recover this dimension through sound signs that are intelligible but, above all, sensual. There is, as we explain, a certain aesthetic, ethical, and semiotic articulation that reinforces the proposal presented here.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Metrics

Metrics Loading ...

Published

2015-10-01

How to Cite

Santos, M. (2015). Towards a New Ethics of Audio Description: Re-creation as a Procedure. Bakhtiniana. Revista De Estudos Do Discurso, 10(3), Port. 222–234 / Eng. 243. Retrieved from https://revistas.pucsp.br/index.php/bakhtiniana/article/view/22363

Issue

Section

Original Articles (2) Language, Philosophy and Art