When East Meets West: a comparison of audio description guidelines in China and Europe

Despite China being the country with most disabled people in the world, the provision of media accessibility services and their academic study are still in their infancy. The present study set out with two objectives: to present a sample of three Chinese audio description guidelines that are mainly employed for training purposes, and to compare the Chinese situation in terms of guidelines with that of Europe, to see if there are any relevant differences to point out and any mutual lessons to be learnt. Our results show there are a number of general similarities between the different Chinese and European guidelines and that the main difference is the different approach to objective vs. subjective description. While Europe is moving away from the dichotomy between objectivity and subjectivity, China still advocates objectivity as being a necessary characteristic of quality audio description