Feeding the imagination: Linguistic features of motion descriptions in audio-described movies

Audio description is a mode of audiovisual translation which renders visual information, including action, accessible to the visually impaired. Because languages differ in their typical means for describing motion events (i.e. Talmy 1985; Slobin 1996a), the audio-described experience available to speakers of different languages may likewise differ, a phenomenon we have dubbed ‘thinking-for-audio-describing’ (cf. thinking-for-speaking, Slobin 1996a). This study examines information about motion events given in the German and Spanish audio-described versions of a corpus of movies aimed at children and young adults. Like English, German typically encodes information about manner in the main verb, thus providing a good contrast to Spanish, which more typically encodes information about path. The results indicate that manner-of-motion information is more varied and frequent in German audio descriptions than in Spanish ones. We argue that this is due to the combined impact of the describer's mother tongue and of the restrictions and guidelines for audio description, with the result that users of audio descriptions in different languages may be presented with different experiences of the same work. • The study is the first of its kind to focus on audio-described motion events in German and Spanish. • German ADs include more and richer descriptions of motion events than Spanish ADs, likely due to language and AD related factors. • Results support the “thinking-for-audio-describing” hypothesis, related to “thinking-for-speaking” and “thinking-for-translating”. • Results suggest need for language-specific AD guidelines, as international guidelines may not be suitable for all languages. • AD guidelines should consider typical patterns of description in each language regarding brevity and vivid descriptions.