In recent years the Multimedia Language Centre at ISCAP has been developing research in audiovisual translation (AVT), especially in the fields of subtitling and dubbing. And although some AVT research has already been undertaken in Portugal, much remains to be done in relation to accessibility. Recently, we have embarked on a research ‘endeavour’ in the field of audio description (AD), with the specific aim to systematise audio description guidelines. We aim to contribute to this project with the present paper by focusing on issues dealing with the generalised view on the expressive/poetic function of language in audio description.
Several guidelines state that descriptions should be impersonal and objective, and the audio describer is warned against expressing emotions or personal points of view. How seriously is this advice taken by practitioners?
Our starting points are the Guidelines for Audio Description, drafted by the ADI AD Guidelines committee, at the National Center on Accessible Information Technology in Education, University of Washington, as well as some other guidelines, such as the now extinct ITC’s Guidelines on Standards for Audio Description, and the BBC Guidelines for Visually Impaired TV Audiences. We compare them to audio described feature films in Portuguese and in English, analysing both AD segments and visual segments in terms of language functions. With this study, we also aim to account for the proliferation of guidelines on the Internet and appraise some of their similarities and differences in relation to our topic.

Graça CHORÃO has an undergraduate degree in Modern Languages and Literatures, a master’s degree in Anglo-American Studies and has been teaching at ISCAP since 1999. She has been engaged in research in the field of audiovisual translation with a special interest in dubbing and subtitling. She is a PhD student in Translation Studies at Vigo University (Portugal).