Into the Language of Audio Description: Compilation of an English - Arabic AD Glossary

Audio Description (AD) scripts are distinctive from the other types of written texts in terms of cohesion and objectivity. AD texts require a high degree of precision when choosing terms that describe different types of visuals. Despite this fact, audio describers still lack specialized glossaries that enable them to provide creative texts that achieve immersive reception by the visually impaired. This study aims simply to compile an AD glossary that helps audio describers in Arabic and English to choose the most accurate terms for their description. To extract this glossary, I prepared a monolingual English corpus of a selection of 18 audiovisual materials that cover almost all movies' genres. The glossary includes seven categories that meet the needs of audio describers in English and Arabic. These categories are characters' focus of attention, changes of location of characters and objects, characters' interpersonal interactions, characters' emotional states and reactions, characters' physical characteristics, change in settings and on-screen texts. The glossary is extracted in an excel sheet of 14 columns providing its users with 1467 word heads and terms with examples and time code to enable them to watch the example on screen comparing them with the visuals that they describe. I provided lexical definitions for all the terms mentioning the source for these definitions in Arabic and English dictionaries and the examples were translated in Arabic in a way that respect AD in films norms in terms of grammar and objectivity. Upon using this glossary, audio describers should study the visuals before deciding the category from which they will get terms.