Resum: |
Neutrality is a term that has been often used to refer to AD voice delivery. Joel Snyder considers that vocal skills are one of the four AD fundamentals, and Louise Fryer states in her 2016 book on audio description that "a neutral delivery has come to be recognized as the norm" (p. 88). Spanish standard UNE153020 (AENOR, 2005) recommends that voicing must be neutral with appropriate intonation. However, it remains to be seen how this neutrality can be defined in relation to prosody. Together with María Machuca and Antonio Ríos, I have carried out different investigations to better understand the prosodic features of audio description in Catalan, English, and Spanish and how they relate to a neutral voicing. We have carried out a prosodic analysis of existing audio descriptions and have also performed a perception test with persons with and without sight loss (60 in Spanish, 81 in Catalan, 71 in English). I will present an overview of the investigations the team by Machuca, Matamala and Ríos has carried out and its main results, showing how neutrality is understood by users. |