The new European project I’m participating in, ADLAB, kicks off this week in Trieste. The project focuses on audio description practices and guidelines across Europe and is led by Chris Taylor from the University of Trieste.

The Postgraduate Programme in Audiovisual Translation I’m heading launches today. The introductory lecture will be delivered by Prof. Teresa Tomaszkiewicz, Dean of the Faculty of Modern Languages, AMU.

I participated in the Points of View Conference in Kraków where I talked about teaching voiceover in Poland. Here’s the abstract of my talk:

As a much under-researched type of audiovisual translation, voiceover has been dubbed the ugly duckling (Orero 2006) or a Cinderella (Woźniak in press) of AVT studies. The negligent approach to voiceover has begun to change with some publications (the first ever book by Franco, Matamala and Orero devoted solely to voiceover published last year) and training courses (e.g. at UAB in Barcelona). The marginal position of voiceover in Western European countries may be justified by the predominance of dubbing or subtitling. However, Poland, which is a truly voiceover land due to its preference for VO in many audiovisual genres, also neglects this AVT mode both in research and in training.
This paper describes a voiceover course organised as part of the Postgraduate Programme in Audiovisual Translation offered by the School of English, Adam Mickiewicz University to fill the gap in voiceover training in Poland. First, VO in the West will be confronted with the voiceover practice in Poland. It turns out that many practical guidelines and teaching recommendations as to the creation of voiceover developed in the West have no application in a voiceover land, where VO is predominantly used not only for documentaries and interviews, but also for fiction genres. Second, contents of a theoretical and practical course will be discussed alongside the author’s experience gained during the organisation of the first AVT programme and VO course in Poznań. Finally, perception of voiceover in the Polish context will be presented together with some interesting research avenues worth pursuing in the voiceover land.

Here is full bibliographic info about an article that has just been published: Chmiel A, Mazur I. 2011. “Audiodeskrypcja jako intersemiotyczny przekład audiowizualny - percepcja produktu i ocena jakości.” In: Kasperska, I; Żuchelkowska, A. (eds.) Przekład jako produkt i kontekst jego odbioru. Poznań: Wydawnictwo Rys, 13-30. It’s in Polish but here’s an abstract in English:

Audio description is a new area in audiovisual translation research. It focuses on the intersemiotic translation of images into words for the blind and partially sighted. Thanks to audio description, the blind have access to the visual aspects of mass media, i.e. they can fully participate in the cultural life of the society. This paper will first focus on the basic rules to follow when creating audio descriptions. Later, the authors will discuss the perception of such a description as a final product and possibilities of its quality assessment based on such criteria as objectivity, synchrony and clarity. Theoretical reflections will be enriched by examples from the audio description of “Serce na dłoni” (A Warm Heart), a film directed by Krzysztof Zanussi. The authors will describe their cooperation with visually impaired consultants and present results of their audio description reception study involving the blind and partially sighted.