Cognitive needs in different cultures: A comparison between the English and Chinese audio description texts in the movie Frozen

In Translation Studies, growing attention has been given to audio description (AD), which can be considered translation in one of the three forms: inter-semiotic (translation from the images to words), intralinguistic (translation from a written text to an oral text performed simultaneously with the images), and interlinguistic (translation from AD written in one language into another language). When a movie has AD versions in two or more languages, the texts can be produced through interlinguistic translation from one language into another or through intersemiotic translation into the respective languages from the same “source texts”, the movie images. In either case, problems related to the understanding of cultural information may arise and caution should be paid to the cognitive needs of visually impaired people speaking different languages. The present study, which is a pilot project comparing the parallel AD texts of the same movie Frozen in English and Chinese, intends to investigate the cognitive gaps resulting from cultural differences and how AD can help provide the sense-conveying information missing in the target culture. In addition, the patterns of information provided by the AD texts will be examined, means of communication be compared and the criteria in AD production be discussed.