ABSTRACT
Audio description (AD) is no longer merely a niche interest in the much wider field of audiovisual translation, itself part of the now vast world of translation studies, but has only relatively recently emerged as an independent field of study and a viable commercial reality in its own right. This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book is devoted to various aspects of the theory surrounding audio description. It looks at the narratological, as opposed to the descriptive, approach to audio description. The book looks at the question of culture-bound references in the creation of audio descriptions. It points to the need for “more systematic product-oriented, user-oriented and process-oriented research” furthering our knowledge of AD text beyond English and Western languages, of how the BPS community receives and experiences audio described products, and how the minds of those creating AD scripts operate.
