Journal of Audiovisual Translation - An offering from the academe: audiovisual translation and accessibility research for practitioners

Guest Editors: Dr Hannah Silvester, University College Cork & Dr Tiina Tuominen, YLE.

In the past two decades, we have seen a huge growth in research on audiovisual translation and accessibility. However, the findings of these research projects are often published in academic journals and books that are not always easily accessible to practitioners, or are not designed to address the practical implications of the research. With this special issue, we would like to offer an opportunity for practitioners to benefit from the flourishing research in the field, and for researchers to make their cutting edge AVT and accessibility research available and accessible to practitioners. The open-access Journal of Audiovisual Translation presents the perfect forum for this exchange. As Jorge Díaz-Cintas (2020: 216) has pointed out, “Striking a happy balance between [the industry and academia] is of paramount importance to safeguard the well-being of the discipline and the profession.” Indeed, Díaz-Cintas (2020: 216-217) mentions that a great deal of AVT research is informed by the industry, but there has been less activity in the opposite direction. We propose to address that shortcoming in this special issue. We invite audiovisual translation and accessibility researchers to highlight the practical significance of their work by publishing pieces that seek to answer crucial questions related to the work of audiovisual translation and accessibility professionals. We envision this special issue to demonstrate how research is useful to practitioners, how it can improve working practices and stakeholders’ experiences in the industry, and what the academic community can do to better communicate their discoveries to the professional audience. Our goal is to facilitate a dialogue between researchers and practitioners that will enrich the industry and academia alike. Through this dialogue, we hope that further avenues for collaboration and community-building can be explored. Authors should consider AVT and accessibility practitioners as their primary audience when writing their article. This will be an academic, peer-reviewed publication, but we would like the texts to be accessible to non-academics and applicable to their professional experience. We welcome contributions from all areas of AVT and accessibility studies, including, but not limited to, interlingual translation (subtitling, dubbing, surtitling, interpreting, voice over, video game localisation) and media accessibility (SDH, audio description, respeaking). The range of potentially relevant themes is broad, and could include, for example:

 the reception and use/usability of audiovisual translations and access services.;

 translation and production processes;

 the potential value of other disciplines (e.g. media studies, psychology, sociology, ethnography) in AVT and accessibility;

 AVT and accessibility policy;

 technological tools, including machine translation;

 AVT and accessibility professionals’ workflow, working contexts and conditions;

 analyses of different textual, cultural, linguistic and communicative aspects of audiovisual translations and access services;

 collaborative practices;

 studies of norms and guidelines;

 quality in AVT and accessibility.

Deadline for abstracts: 16 November 2020

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