Ye, Zi, Zhang, Xiaochun, O'Sullivan, Carol and Marinetti, Cristina  ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5877-280X
2026.
Audio describing humour in the Chinese context: a creative and collaborative approach.
JoSTrans: The Journal of Specialised Translation
46
, pp. 164-187.
10.26034/cm.jostrans.2026.8326
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Abstract
Audio description (AD) has seen rapid development internationally, including in China. AD principles have long focused on objectivity, and thus have yet to fully address the difficulties of audio describing humorous content, as the objective principle may conflict with comedy’s main goal of generating affective responses. This article reflects on an exploratory study practising a creative, collaborative AD approach to prioritise the comedic value of the material. Following the action research approach, the first author, as the audio describer, worked with three external comedy creators and two persons with visual impairments to co-produce AD for a comedy fragment from Never Say Die (dir. SONG Yang & ZHANG Chiyu, 2017). Some creative approaches with which we experimented have considerable potential to give the AD its own humorous verbal charge, but in other cases, proposed creative solutions were rejected or replaced by a more objective approach. This suggests that, rather than moving away from an objective approach, comedy-first AD may expect to balance creativity and objectivity. Our small co-creation project underlines the importance of engaging with creatives as well as users with different sight conditions to create AD for comedy, and highlights the issue of power relations within multidisciplinary AD teams.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Date Type: | Publication |
| Status: | Published |
| Schools: | Schools > Modern Languages |
| Publisher: | University of Roehampton |
| ISSN: | 1740-357X |
| Date of First Compliant Deposit: | 12 June 2026 |
| Date of Acceptance: | 11 June 2026 |
| Last Modified: | 04 Sep 2026 11:04 |
| URI: | https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/187542 |
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