Cover not available

In:Corpus Use in Cross-linguistic Research: Paving the way for teaching, translation and professional communication
Edited by Marlén Izquierdo and Zuriñe Sanz-Villar
[Studies in Corpus Linguistics 113] 2023
► pp. 142–156

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload Book PDF
EPUB logo with download linkDownload Book EPUB
authorization required

Chapter 8
Opera audio description in the spoken-written language continuum

 | Autonomous University of Barcelona
Published online: 2 November 2023
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.113.08her
Corpus linguistics research on audio description (AD) – the verbal rendering of visual information generally targeted at people with visual impairment – has focused on film and museums. The present corpus gathers opera AD scripts from the Liceu opera house (Bacelona) and Teatro Real (Madrid), and sorts them into four subcorpora, two devoted to AD throughout the performance and two comprising audio introductions (AI). I set to interrogate where opera AD falls in the spoken-written language continuum. The results suggest that all subcorpora are of a high lexical density, and in terms of lexical variation, the standardised type-token ratio remains below 50%. The mean sentence and word length, and the Flesch-Szigriszt readability results lead us to place the AIs closer to written language than ADs.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The language of audio description through the lens of corpus linguistics
  • 3.The spoken-written continuum
  • 4.Methodology
    • 4.1Sample of scripts
    • 4.2Measures
  • 5.Results
    • 5.1Lexical density
    • 5.2Lexical variation
    • 5.3Mean sentence length
    • 5.4Mean word length
    • 5.5Flesch-Szigriszt readability index
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
References (47)
References
AENOR. 2005. Norma UNE 153020. Audiodescripción para personas con discapacidad visual. Requisitos para la audiodescripción y elaboración de audioguías (Audio description for visually impaired people. Guidelines for audio description procedures and for the preparation of audio guides). Madrid: AENOR.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Arias-Badia, Blanca & Matamala, Anna. 2020. Audio description meets Easy-to-Read and Plain Language: Results from a questionnaire and a focus group in Catalonia. Zeitschrift für Katalanistik 33: 251–270. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Arias-Badia, Blanca. 2020. Subtitling Television Series: A Corpus-Driven Study of Police Procedurals. Berlin: Peter Lang. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Arma, Saveria. 2011. The Language of Filmic Audio Description: A Corpus-Based Analysis of Adjectives. PhD dissertation, Università de-gli Studi di Napoli Federico II.
Baños, Rocio. 2013. ‘That is so cool’: Investigating the translation of adverbial intensifiers in English-Spanish dubbing through a parallel corpus of sitcoms. Perspectives 21(4): 526–542. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Barrio Cantalejo, Inés M. 2007. Legibilidad y salud. Los métodos de medición de la legibilidad y su aplicación al diseño de folletos educativos sobre salud. PhD dissertation, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid.
Bernabé Caro, Rocío & Orero, Pilar. 2019. Easy to read as multimode accessibility service. Hermeneus 21: 53–74. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Biber, Douglas, Davies, Mark, Jones, James K. & Tracy-Ventura, Nicole. 2006. Spoken and written register variation in Spanish: A multi-dimensional analysis. Corpora 1: 1–37. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Biber, Douglas, Johansson, Stig, Leech, Geoffrey, Conrad, Susan & Finegan, Edward. 1999. Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. London: Longman. Also published as Biber, Douglas, Johansson, Stig, Leech, Geoffrey, Conrad, Susan & Finegan, Edward. 2021. Grammar of Spoken and Written English. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Biber, Douglas. 1986. Spoken and written textual dimensions in English: Resolving the contradictory findings. Language 62: 384–414. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1988. Variation across Speech and Writing. Cambridge: CUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Blankenship, Jane. 1962. A linguistic analysis of oral and written style. Quarterly Journal of Speech 48: 419–422. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brezina, Vaclav. 2018. Statistics in Corpus Linguistics: A Practical Guide. Cambridge: CUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Casagrande, Maria & Cortini, Paolo. 2008. Spoken and written dream communication: Differences and methodological aspects. Consciousness and Cognition 17(1): 145–158. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Castellà, Josep M. 2002. La complexitatlLingüística en el discurs oral i escrit: Densitat lèxica, composició original i connexió textual. PhD dissertation, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
Díaz-Cintas, Jorge. 2003. Teoría y práctica de la subtitulación Inglés-Español. Barcelona: Ariel.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Durán, Pilar, Malvern, David, Richards, Brian & Chipere, Ngoni. 2004. Developmental trends in lexical diversity. Applied Linguistics 25(2): 220–242. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Flesch, Rudolph. 1948. A new readability yardstick. Journal of Applied Psychology 32: 221–233. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fryer, Louise. 2016. An Introduction to Audio Description: A Practical Guide. London: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gispert, Adrià & Mariño, José B. 2006. Catalan-English statistical machine translation without parallel corpus: Bridging through Spanish. In Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation, 65–68. <[URL]> 29 May 2023.
van Gijsel, Sofie, Speelman, Dirk & Geeraerts, Dirk. 2005. A variationist, corpus linguistics analysis of lexical richness. Proceedings from the Corpus Linguistics Conference Series 1(1): 1–16.
Greco, Gian Maria. 2018. The nature of accessibility studies. Journal of Audiovisual Translation 1(1): 205–232. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Halliday, Michael A. K. 1979. Differences between spoken and written language: Some implications for literacy teaching. Communication through Reading: Proceedings of the 4th Australian Reading Conference, Brisbane, 25–27 August 1978, Glenda Page, John Elkins & Barrie O’Connor (eds), 37–52. Adelaide: Australian Reading Association.
Jiménez Hurtado, Catalina & Martínez, Silvia. 2018. Concept selection and translation strategy: Subtitling for the Deaf based on corpus analysis. Linguistica Antverpiensia, New Series – Themes in Translation Studies 14: 114–139. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jiménez Hurtado, Catalina & Soler Gallego, Silvia. 2013. Multimodality, translation and accessibility: A corpus-based study of audio description. Perspectives 21(4): 577–594. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kalimeri, Maria, Constantoudis, Vassilios, Papadimitriou, Constantinos, Karamanos, Konstantinos, Diakonos, Fotis K. & Papageorgiou, Harris. 2015. Word-length entropies and correlations of natural language written texts. Journal of Quantitative Linguistics 22(2): 101–118. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Levshina, Natalia. 2017. Online film subtitles as a corpus: An n-gram approach. Corpora 12(3): 311–338. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Matamala, Anna. 2008. La oralidad en la ficción televisiva: Análisis de las interjecciones de un corpus de comedias de situación originales y dobladas. In La oralidad fingida: Descripción y traducción. Teatro, cómic y medios audiovisuales, Jenny Brumme (ed.), 81–94. Frankfurt/Madrid: Vervuert/Iberoamericana.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2018. One short film, different audio descriptions: Analysing the language of audio descriptions created by students and professionals. Onomázein 41: 185–207. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
McNamee, Paul & Mayfield, James. 2004. Character ngram tokenization for European language text retrieval. Information Retrieval 7: 73–97. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
O’Donnell, Roy C. 1974. Syntactic differences between speech and writing. American Speech 49: 102–110. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Oakes, Michael P. 1998. Statistics for Corpus Linguistics. Edinburgh: EUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pavesi, Maria. 2013. ‘This’ and ‘that’ in the language of film dubbing: A corpus-based analysis. Meta 58(1): 103–133. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Perego, Elisa. 2019. Into the language of museum audio descriptions: A corpus-based study. Perspectives 27(3): 333–349. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rai, Sonali, Greening, Joan & Petré, Leen. 2010. A Comparative Study of Audio Description Guidelines Prevalent in Different Countries. London: RNIB.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Remael, Aline, Reviers, Nina & Vercauteren, Gert (eds). 2015. Pictures Painted in Words: ADLAB Audio Description Guidelines. Trieste: EUT.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Reviers, Nina, Roofthooft, Hanne & Remael, Aline. 2021. Translating multisemiotic texts: The case of audio introductions for the performing arts. The Journal of Specialised Translation 35: 69–95.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Reviers, Nina. 2017. Audio-description in Dutch: A Corpus-based Study into the Linguistic Features of a New, Multimodal Text Type. PhD dissertation, University of Antwerp.
Romero-Fresco, Pablo & Fryer, Louise. 2013. Could audio-described films benefit from audio introductions? An audience response study. Journal of Visual Impairment and Blindness 107(4): 287–295. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Romero-Fresco, Pablo. 2009. Naturalness in the Spanish dubbing language: A case of not-so-close Friends. Meta 54(1): 49–72. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Salway, Andrew. 2007. A corpus-based analysis of audio description. In Media for All: Subtitling for the Deaf, Audio Description, and Sign Language, Jorge Díaz-Cintas, Pilar Orero & Aline Remael (eds), 151–174. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sepielak, Katarzyna. (2016). Voice-Over in Multilingual Fiction Movies in Poland. Translation and Synchronization Techniques, Content Comprehension and Language Identification. PhD dissertation, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.
Soler Gallego, Silvia. 2018. Audio descriptive guides in art museums: A corpus-based semantic analysis. Translation and Interpreting Studies 13(2): 230–249. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Stromqvist, Sven, Johansson, Victoria, Kritz, Sarah, Ragnarsdottir, Hrafnhildur, Aisenman, Ravid & Ravid, Dorit. 2002. Toward a cross-linguistic comparison of lexical quanta in speech and writing. Written Language and Literacy 5(1): 45–68. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Stubbs, Michael. 1996. Text and Corpus Analysis. Computer-assisted Studies of Language and Culture. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ure, Jean. 1971. Lexical density and register differentiation. In Applications of Linguistics, George E. Perren & John L. M. Trim (eds), 443–452. London: CUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue