Into the language of museum audio descriptions: a corpus-based study

Abstract

The paper portrays a linguistic and textual analysis of a corpus of 18 museum audio descriptions (ADs) (a fairly neglected area of accessibility and audiovisual translation research) in order to pinpoint the salient features of this text type and relate them to current AD literature and guidelines. Results show that scripted and recorded museum AD texts comply with recommendations only partially. They guarantee vivid, imaginative and diverse language as well as substantial text informativity through the combination of high lexical diversity and the extensive use of descriptive adjectives as well as substantial lexical density. In spite of the use of short words, however, museum ADs seem more lexically and syntactically complex than expected, with their use of opaque technical terms, heavy adjectival phrases and long sentences. More systematic and contrastive research will help to (dis)confirm these results, whereas audience reception research will contribute to determine the real degree of usability of these new text types.

The hierarchisation of operatic signs through the lens of audio description A corpus study

“…When discussing lexical variation, TTR results from the opera pilot corpus (ES=22.31%; CAT=20.53%) differ greatly from the standardised TTR (ES=37.10%; CAT=39.16%). As we seek to compare our results with those in previous AD corpora, we face the challenge of non-uniformity: some studies apply the TTR measurement (Arma 2011;Perego 2019), while others report their findings with standardised TTR (Reviers 2018;Soler Gallego 2018). In any case, excessive lexical variation is generally avoided in AD, as the aim is to foster access, irrespective of the patrons' "language competence, background preparation and individual attention patterns" (Hutchinson & Eardley 2018: 8-9, in Perego 2019.…”

“…On the other hand, multimodal corpora involve the manual or semi-automatic tagging of the different meaning-making semiotic modes (Tuominen et al 2018: 9), thereby addressing the multimedia nature of audiovisual products. In both cases, previous corpus studies on AD have widely been devoted to film and, to a lesser extent, museum AD (Perego 2019;Soler Gallego 2018).…”

Overcoming Language Barriers to Environmental Information: A Study of Easy-to-Read Adaptations

“…When interpreting the TTR results of each text, it is important to consider the number of tokens in each text, as the longer a text is, the lower the TTR [34]. While initially, it appears that the standard text has a lower TTR score than the ER versions, which have a higher lexical density, in reality, it is the contrary.…”

Accessible Communication : A Cross-country Journey

“…The language of art AD can in fact exploit the major informative load of noun groups (Biber at al. 1999) to enhance its informativity and vividness (Perego 2018) but at the detriment of immediate comprehensibility and smooth processability. The original Nelson text includes several complex noun strings with varying structures, mainly comprising a head noun that is both heavily pre-and postmodified (cf.…”

“…In one of the sentences of the Nelson excerpt (The crown is three times life-sized, with golden spheres the size of oranges adorning the outside), the linear English SVC structure is used, where a simple subject consisting of a determiner and a head noun (the crown) and a semantically light verb are followed by a complex complement, consisting of a compound adjective and an elaborate post-modifying prepositional phrase: "three times life-sized, with golden spheres the size of oranges adorning the outside". Despite the abundance of visual details that the original text conveys for the benefit of the blind and visually impaired end users (Giansante 2015;Perego 2018), its adaptation into Easy English shall do without most of these enriching details (Example 14):…”