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Article published In: Translation Spaces
Vol. 14:1 (2025) ► pp.146–169

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Translated from English or created in Spanish? The reception of audio description for video games

An experimental pilot study

ORCiD logo with link | Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
ORCiD logo with link | University College London
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Published online: 4 April 2025
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https://doi.org/10.1075/ts.24037.man
Abstract
Video gaming has gained immense popularity as a form of entertainment all around the world. However, most games are not fully accessible for players with visual disabilities. Audio description (AD) translates visual elements into spoken words, thus making games accessible to players with vision loss. The TransAD4games project aims to explore the creation and translation of audio descriptions for video games to improve game accessibility across languages and cultures. This article presents part of the research findings from the TransAD4games, reporting the outcomes of a reception study on players’ preferences and opinion about AD for the game Before I Forget (3-Fold Games, 2020) translated from English into Spanish and AD created from scratch in Spanish. Results show that while players preferred the original Spanish AD created from scratch, they also appreciated the translated version, suggesting that translating AD is a viable and acceptable option to improve visual game accessibility.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Game accessibility for persons with visual disabilities
  • 3.Research design
  • 4.Findings and discussion
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Note
  • References
  • Gameography
References (54)
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Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Zhang, Xiaochun & Carme Mangiron
2025. Audio description in video games. Babel. Revue internationale de la traduction / International Journal of Translation / Revista Internacional de Traducción 71:4 ► pp. 527 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 6 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

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