In the UK, the critically-acclaimed German TV series Deutschland 83 has proved very popular among Channel 4 viewers and critics alike; an engrossing spy story that brings viewers uncomfortably close to the Iron Curtain. The fact that it’s eight episodes of intense foreign language drama has made it a particular challenge for those of us in the Audio Description team. We were tasked with not only doing our traditional job of guiding the visually-impaired through the cold war shenanigans onscreen, but also reading out a mountain of subtitled dialogue. In addition, we were to voice both the dialogue and the AD with a single speaker.

Of course, making this a viable means of access for blind viewers required getting both the AD script and the voice delivery just right. To do this, we utilised a range of different techniques…

First off, ace Describer Ed May spent long hours scripting the project, condensing much of the dialogue into a ‘He says – She says’ format to help keep conversations comprehensible, occasionally paraphrasing where time constraints made it impractical to include every last line. Tailor-made descriptions sometimes incorporated both action and speech and the careful placing of our voice files also made for a better understanding of just who was talking during long multi-character scenes.

This still left instances where important dialogue was so fast paced there was no time for anything except stretches of undiluted chit-chat. On these occasions it fell to me, as the voicer, to attempt a distinctive tone or attitude for each speaker; although that’s not to say it was an opportunity for funny voices in the Goon Show mould(!)…part of our job is to be as unobtrusive as possible and so this aspect had to be done with a degree of subtlety.

It could be argued that a better way to handle the AD in foreign language programmes is to have two voicers, one describing the action and the other the dialogue, but that approach would still leave us struggling with the problems laid out above. We have in the past experimented with shorter foreign language scenes described by a ‘full cast’ of voicers, with as many as four or five people in a recording booth at once, but the complexity of this makes it somewhat impractical. Essentially ‘re-dubbing’ foreign language films is an art in itself and not what we humble describers usually do.

Is it possible to enjoy an hour of drama that’s wall-to-wall describing? Can we really avoid confusion when we’re describing onscreen action as well as reading out all that dialogue between numerous characters?

By and large, from feedback received, we think we’ve been pretty successful. Audio Description is not without its limitations but we always work hard to overcome them. This method has proved to be one way of getting the job done, providing better access to the kind of show the visually impaired often miss out on.

Gary Bakewell, Audio Describer