Integrating museum studies into translation studies: towards a reconceptualization of the source text as sensory experience in museum audio description and the notion of experiential equivalence

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on museum audio description (AD) as a modality of intersemiotic translation (IT) primarily addressed to people with visual impairments. Still at an early stage of development in terms of both academic research and professional practices, museum AD lies at the crossroads of a variety of disciplines, such as translation studies (TS) and museum studies (MS). The aim of this contribution is to suggest a reconceptualization of traditional notions in TS (source text and equivalence) in the context of museum AD and encompassing the translational phenomenon per se. Theoretical considerations from MS and specific guidelines for museum AD practices will offer cross-disciplinary insights to redefine such concepts and reflect upon translation as a semiosic process in which meanings are created, rather than transferred. This article suggests the coincidence in AD of source and target texts as sensory experience and puts forth the concept of experiential equivalence.

KEYWORDS:

• Intersemiotic translation
• museum audio description
• museum studies
• source text
• equivalence

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 This article is the result of an entirely joint and co-ordinated effort on the part of the authors. Marina Manfredi is responsible for the sections “Introduction”, “Some conceptual issues in TS” and “Conclusions”, while Chiara Bartolini is responsible for “New paradigms in MS”, “Museum AD: some theoretical insights from the professional guidelines” and “Two conceptualizations of museum AD”. The sections “ST/TT as an instance of sensory experience”, “Towards the notion of experiential equivalence” and “Revisiting the notion of translation” were written up jointly by the two authors.

2 Throughout the article, the term interpretation will be used with the meaning assigned to it in MS, as defined in this section, instead of the commonly accepted meaning attributed in TS.

3 The ADLAB project was financed by the European Union as part of the EACEA Lifelong Learning program. The AD guidelines produced as a project deliverable contain the section “Descriptive guides: Access to museums, cultural venues and heritage sites” (Neves 2015).

4 In the European guidelines, the concept of AD is referred to as DG, i.e. “descriptive guide”.

5 Since the guidelines by DescriVedendo (2021) are written in Italian, quotations in the article are the authors’ translation.

6 For “experiential equivalence”, we do not refer to the notion proposed by Sechrest, Fay, and Hafeez Zaidi (1972).