Audio Describing Humour in Persian: The Case of Shaun the Sheep, Road Runner and The Pink Panther

Abstract

Audio description (AD) has been a topic of high interest among translation studies researchers in the past two decades. Despite this, certain aspects of AD have been left unexplored, especially in non-European settings. One aspect of this accessibility service which has received little scholarly attention is humour. To fill this gap, this paper examines how Iranian audio describers navigate humour in the Persian AD of English silent animations. Three humour-driven silent animations with Persian AD were analysed, comparing the original and AD versions. The findings revealed that while some humorous elements remained undescribed, leading to a partial loss of comedic effect, audio describers effectively conveyed certain aspects of humour in most cases. In other words, the compound nature of humour helped retain its impact even when certain elements were omitted. Additionally, it appeared that the absence of dialogue in silent animations, coupled with their heavy reliance on visual elements, presented a notable challenge for audio describers in effectively conveying all the humorous elements.