AUDIOVISUAL TRANSLATION AND AUDIO DESCRIPTION (ENGLISH)

This is one of the basic courses within the Translation and Interpretation MA programme. This course aims to provide students with practical and methodological tools for audiovisual translation and audio description from/into Italia/English.
Building on the knowledge and competences acquired in the previous academic year, the course aims to strengthen students’ ability to carry out IT vs EN contrastive linguistic analysis and to apply the findings to intersemiotic translation and audio description.

Knowledge and competences
By the end of the course, students will have acquired knowledge of:
- the stylistic differences between texts written to be read vs texts written to be delivered orally, and the differences involved in organising and delivering the information
- key theories of multimodality and intersemiotic translation
- key principles and guidelines for audio description, with a focus on museum audio description
- techniques for intersemiotic translation and audio description

Applying knowledge and competences
By the end of the course, students will be able to:
- carry out linguistic analysis aimed at identifying translation problems for intersemiotic translation and audio description
- apply collaborative practices
- produce audio description scripts that comply with the existing guidelines and best practices
- use software for multimodal analysis of auido files (QDA Miner Lite)

Making judgements
By the end of the course, students will be able to:
- appropriately select strategies and techniques to solve translation problems
- justify and self-evaluate their own translation choices
- carry out quality check based on existing guidelines and best practices

Communication skills:
By the end of the course, students will be able to:
- use the relevant metalanguage in linguistic/multimodal analysis and in the evaluation of translation strategies
- communicate their own observations and objections at both in languistic/multimodal analysis as well as in translation, especially be means of collaborative practices
- communicate art to specific categories of visitors

Learning skills:
By the end on the course, students will be able to critically consult the relevant bibliographic resources.

Students are required to possess English language competences and skills at C1 level of the European Common Reference Framework for languages.
Although no certificate in Information Technology is required, for successful learning and training the following skills are necessary:
- a positive attitude to IT tools designed for learning
- a very good mastery of Microsoft Office Word and Microsoft Office Powerpoint
- a very good mastery of Web-based research tools
- a very good mastery of the Italian language
Students who do not possess sufficient IT skills will need to acquire them on their own.

The course is composed of a 30-hour monographic course.

Course contents:
- Stylistic categories (writing vs speech) and 'complex medium texts'
- Analysis of audio guide scripts from an IT vs EN contrastive perspective
- Intersemiotic translation practice
- Guidelines for audio description
- Analysis of audio description in English
- Analysis of audio description for children
- Audio description practice
- Role play activities aimed at acquiring the audio describer's mindset and realise the challenges involved in audio description
- Use of QDA Miner Lite for multimodal analysis of audio files

All the materials that will be uploaded on the Moodle course weekly are compulsory for exam preparation.

Compulsory readings:
Testi obbligatori per la preparazione all'esame:
- Fina, Maria Elisa. 2018. Investigating Effective Audio Guiding. A Multimodal Comparison of the Genre in Italian and English. Roma: Carocci.
- Taylor, Cristopher & Perego, Elisa (eds.). 2022. The Routledge Handbook of Audio Description. Routledge. (letture selezionate fornite dalla docente)
- Perego, Elisa. 2019. "Into the Language of Museum Audio Descriptions: A Corpus-based Study", Perspectives, 1-17.
Other articles will be provided during the course

Other sources
ADLAB (website)
ADLAB PRO (website)
Online or printed dictionaries: free choice
Online monolingual dictionary recommended: Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English

The exam is composed of a written final assignment (Tesina) and an oral exam, as follows:

- Tesina: final assignment involving either intersemiotic translation OR audio description with explicative essay. The students will be required to choose one among a range of options provided by the lecturer. (Further details are available in the Learning Agreement that will be published in the Moodle course https://moodle.unive.it/course/view.php?id=16204 ) Students are required to produce a script ready for oral delivery, with clear annotations in the script regarding the (type(s) of) narrator(s), sounds, music, musical pauses, functional pauses, significant changes in prosody.

- Oral exam: powerpoint presentation (around 20-30 minutes depending on whether students have worked individually or in group), in which students will illustrate the approach and strategies adopted in the assignment. Indications on how to structure an academic presentation will be provided during the course. After the presentation, discussion will follow.

Assessment criteria:
1. translation quality
2. ability to select appropriate strategies and techniques
3. ability to motivate the translation strategies that have been adopted

The activities/assignments that will be indicated on the e-learning Moodle course on a weekly basis are compulsory for ALL students in order to access the exam. Students are allowed to work in groups of max. 4 students. In this case, the same mark will be assigned to all members of the group.

The course will be held in blended mode: 10 lessons will take place in presence and 5 lessons will be take place asynchronously on the Moodle course (https://moodle.unive.it/course/view.php?id=16204 ). In the asynchronous lessons, students are required to connect to Moodle and carry out the activities indicated for that week, but the lecturer will not be connected. The calendar of asynchronous lessons will be published on the Moodle course at the beginning of the course.
The course will be held mainly in English and will consist in both lecture-based and interactive classes. For learning purposes, students are required to actively participate in the exam practice activities and discussions, both in the classroom and in Moodle.
All students are required to sign up to the Moodle course that will be indicated by the lecturer (the link will be published on the lecturer’s personal unive webpage) and, for exam preparation, refer to the materials and activities that will be uploaded in Moodle on a weekly basis.

English

Attendance is highly recommended. If you are not able to attend, please contact me at the beginning of the course.
The course will be held mainly in English, but some discussions might be held in Italian.
Given the complexity of the topics, the lecturer might modify the syllabus depending on the student's level, response and needs.

written and oral

This subject deals with topics related to the macro-area "Cities, infrastructure and social capital" and contributes to the achievement of one or more goals of U. N. Agenda for Sustainable Development