Title
Raising communicative awareness through AD in the FL classroom
Conference name
1st International conference on didactic audiovisual translation and media accessibility
City
Country
Spain
Modalities
Date
22/03/2023-24/03/2023
Abstract
One of the new practices that is gaining recognition in education is that of addressing the issue of audiovisual translation, specifically accessibility modalities, where the (trainee) translator adopts a role that goes beyond (cross-linguistic) mediation and delves into providing practices of inclusive communication (Burger, 2016; Calduch and Talaván, 2018; Ibáñez Moreno and Vermeulen, 2017; Navarrete, 2022; Pintado Gutiérrez, 2019).
In this paper, we describe an audio description (AD) based pedagogic intervention where learners of Spanish as a foreign language at an Irish university acted as researchers, observers, practitioners, and AD users. In this 5-phase didactic proposal they carried out different tasks researching the visibility of AD in Ireland, assessing professional ADs, and producing and revoicing several AD scripts. When audio describing in L1 and FL students worked in pairs and
covered different roles -blind and non-blind- with the aims of reflecting on the communication needs of blind and visually impaired people and understanding how these could be addressed effectively in AD.
Observational records were gathered through field notes and booklets which were handed to students in order to provide information on AD and how to carry out these tasks, as well as guiding them through a series of reflections on the challenges posed by each task.
In the light of students’ reflections on the challenges of intersemiotic transfer, the overall conclusion is that such intervention activates their awareness on accessibility and their role as mediators facilitating communication. The overall trend shows that, when operating in their FL, students move away from language concerns and their ultimate goal is to improve the way they audio describe. Students' reflections also provided data to elaborate a multilayered framework based on the Council of Europe’s Companion Volume (2020) which can be used as a model for the design and analysis of future intersemiotic tasks.
In this paper, we describe an audio description (AD) based pedagogic intervention where learners of Spanish as a foreign language at an Irish university acted as researchers, observers, practitioners, and AD users. In this 5-phase didactic proposal they carried out different tasks researching the visibility of AD in Ireland, assessing professional ADs, and producing and revoicing several AD scripts. When audio describing in L1 and FL students worked in pairs and
covered different roles -blind and non-blind- with the aims of reflecting on the communication needs of blind and visually impaired people and understanding how these could be addressed effectively in AD.
Observational records were gathered through field notes and booklets which were handed to students in order to provide information on AD and how to carry out these tasks, as well as guiding them through a series of reflections on the challenges posed by each task.
In the light of students’ reflections on the challenges of intersemiotic transfer, the overall conclusion is that such intervention activates their awareness on accessibility and their role as mediators facilitating communication. The overall trend shows that, when operating in their FL, students move away from language concerns and their ultimate goal is to improve the way they audio describe. Students' reflections also provided data to elaborate a multilayered framework based on the Council of Europe’s Companion Volume (2020) which can be used as a model for the design and analysis of future intersemiotic tasks.