Journey to the East. What is happening in the Chinese audio description (AD) world? An interview-based study

Abstract

Despite the existence of audio description (AD) in China from 2005, little is known about how AD is conducted in China due to the scarcity of studies on this subject. This article, based on semi-structured interviews with six Chinese AD providers from Shanghai, Wuxi, and Guangzhou, aims to narrow this knowledge gap and present how AD is performed in Mainland China, as seen by some of the key agents involved. The interviews were conducted between April 30 and July 13, 2020, through voice calls on WeChat. Results can be grouped under the following three topics: the current state of AD in China, how AD is conducted in China, and the feasibility of AD translation from Spanish into Chinese. This study has reached two main conclusions. First, AD in China is, now, full of opportunities and challenges, with the copyright issue as its main problem and the objectivity versus subjectivity dichotomy as one of the most debatable concerns in the scriptwriting process. Second, almost all the interviewees showed a positive attitude towards the proposal of AD translation to promote this service in China, in our particular case from Spanish into Chinese.

Keywords

• audio description; china; media accessibility; audio description translation; semi-structured interviews.