The book is intended as a comprehensive and up-to-date resource covering the booming field of audiovisual translation and media accessibility. Given the number and calibre of international conferences, projects, publications—including prominently the newly established Journal of Audiovisual Translation (JAT)1—courses and diploma theses devoted to these topics, it is undeniable that there is huge and growing demand for volumes that will capture the developments in audiovisual translation (AVT) as well as media accessibility (MA) and, nomen omen, accessibly consolidate the body of knowledge in the areas. Even if we limit the time span to the very last few years, successful attempts along these lines have been made both in the form of single-author monographs (e.g. Pérez-González 2014; Bogucki 2013/2019; Ellender 2015; Massidda 2015; Beseghi 2017; Dore 2019; Lertola 2019; Romero-Fresco 2019), jointly authored monographs (e.g. Chmiel and Mazur 2014; Talaván et al. 2016; Hołobut and Woźniak 2017), edited volumes (e.g. Bogucki and Deckert 2015; Díaz-Cintas and Baños Piñero 2015; Díaz-Cintas and Neves 2015; Jankowska and Szarkowska 2015; Rentel et al. 2015; Díaz-Cintas and Nikolić 2017; Orrego-Carmona and Lee 2017; Di Giovanni and Gambier 2018; Gambier and Ramos Pinto 2018; Ranzato and Zanotti 2018; Sanderson and Botella-Tejera 2018; Deckert 2019; O’Sullivan and Cornu 2019; Ranzato and Zanotti 2019) and special issues of scientific journals (e.g. Zanotti and Ranzato 2019; Vercauteren and Mazur 2019; Díaz-Cintas and Szarkowska 2020). While some of the publications opt for a more all-embracing approach, for instance, finding a common denominator to bring together contributions dealing with different modes, methodologies and subject areas, others choose to zoom in on a selected topic and explore it in greater depth. What the current volume aspires to accomplish is to strike a balance between what could be generally called “scope”, on the one hand, and “depth”, on the other, in that sense sharing some of the premises and objectives with Pérez-González (2019).
An important feature of the current book, as evidenced already on the cover, is that it chooses to position media accessibility as a discernible field of practice and research that need not be subordinate to audiovisual translation—a decision which is not trivial even though a similar conceptualisation has been proposed before (cf. e.g. Gambier 2006; Díaz-Cintas and Remael 2007; Remael et al. 2012). Indeed, it was well over a decade ago when Gambier (2006: 4) pointed to the conceptual breadth of the field by observing that “(r)ecently, accessibility has also become an important issue in the computer and telecommunications industries, the aim being to optimize the user-friendliness of software, web sites and other applications. Distribution of AV media is also involved in this trend”. His view could possibly be taken to model accessibility as superordinate with respect to translation since he argues that “the issue of accessibility is (…) not merely a question of providing for special visual, auditory, motor or cognitive needs”. Actually, Gambier (2006: 4) goes even further by arguing that accessibility means that “services are available and that information is provided and easy to understand”. This formulation makes two points. While the first one—about availability—seems clear and uncontroversial, one could ask whether the ease of understanding should be universally prioritised as a criterion operating irrespective of parameters like function, audience profile or type of material. Still, while I would argue the criterion should not be taken for granted, it will be a valuable guiding principle in most contexts.
In fact, questions like this one or concerning the relationship between AVT and MA are pivotal among those addressed throughout this handbook. As will become apparent to the reader, some authors choose to treat the two separately—while others more or less explicitly see one of them as being a part of the other. We believe this diversity is an asset rather than a problem because it demonstrates the current perceptions among leading scholars in the field(s) who are very likely to shape the perceptions of their colleagues and students. On this note, if that heuristic is of some use in illustrating the current dynamics of research interests, the recent Intermedia conference, held in September 2019 in Warsaw, featured as many as 19 papers devoted primarily to accessibility in the sensory sense, discussing audio description, subtitling for the deaf and (the) hard of hearing as well as sign language, which amounted to approximately 40% of all the subjects covered. It will therefore be interesting to track how the relationships between the different modes and subareas discussed throughout the handbook, and documented at a particular point in time, change in the years to come.
On another level, the handbook also critically foregrounds a systemic concern which has remained largely unresolved in many countries and pivots on the question of what scientific discipline best accommodates the work discussed in the current book.2 Questions like that become relevant, for instance, when a researcher’s output is evaluated, which can then have implications for individual researchers and their institutions alike. The handbook shows that it is hardly feasible, and definitely hardly productive in the scientific sense, to impose any rigid delineations on a multifarious and dynamically expanding line of research such as the one in this book. That is to say, the chapters that make up the current volume clearly demonstrate that AVT and MA will methodologically and thematically interface a range of disciplines including—but not limited to—linguistics, psychology, film studies, educational sciences, media and communications, history, law, sociology and philosophy.
The book is structured around five major sections, with a total of 33 chapters. Part I—titled “Audiovisual Translation and Media Accessibility Within and beyond Translation Studies”—comprises four contributions. This first section will outline the past and current state of the development of AVT and MA as they have functioned—with different degrees of autonomy—within the broader domain of translation studies. A major question that the section presents and seeks to answer is whether AVT and MA are discernible fields or whether perhaps one is a subfield within the other. Another subject of inquiry here is the semiotic composition of AVT and MA which will then be also taken up later in the handbook. This section opens with “An Excursus on Audiovisual Translation”—an interview Łukasz Bogucki conducted with Jorge Díaz-Cintas. The chapters that follow are Elisa Perego and Ralph Pacinotti’s “Audiovisual Translation Through the Ages”, “Media Accessibility within and beyond Audiovisual Translation” by Gian Maria Greco and Anna Jankowska and “Multimodality and Intersemiotic Translation” by Christopher Taylor.
Part II centres on “Modes of Audiovisual Translation and Media Accessibility”. It surveys and fine-tunes the typology of AVT modes to map out the field and characterise in detail its differently conditioned modes, including both the more established and the emerging ones. Notably, the term “mode” is used to encompass more than the production method (e.g. subtitling or dubbing) to also denote a broader approach as exemplified by practices such as fansubbing or collaborative translation. This section comprises eight contributions. We start with Frederic Chaume’s “Dubbing”, proceeding with “Translating Non-fictional Genres: Voice-over and Off-screen Dubbing” by Anna Matamala, “The Name and Nature of Subtitling” by Jorge Díaz-Cintas and “The Drama of Surtitling: Ever-Changing Translation on Stage” by Juan Marcos Carrillo. The next two chapters deal with the notions of fan-produced translations. These are Serenella Massidda’s “Fansubbing: Latest Trends and Future Prospects” and “Fandubbing” by Rocío Baños. We then pass on to chapters focusing on accessibility: Iwona Mazur’s “Audio Description: Concepts, Theories and Research Approaches” and Agnieszka Szarkowska’s “Subtitling for the Deaf and the Hard of Hearing”. The contributions that come next further expand t...