The Centre for Applied Linguistics and Translation (CALTS), School of Humanities, University of Hyderabad (UoH) organized a University Level Distinguished Lecture titled “Audiovisual Translation in the Streaming Era: Challenges and Opportunities” on 5th February 2025, funded by the IoE, UoH as part of the University Golden Jubilee lecture series. The talk was delivered by the eminent scholar in audiovisual translation, Prof. Jorge Diaz-Cintas, from CenTras, University College, London. Prof. Diaz-Cintas has been appointed as Chair-Professor, CALTS by IoE for a period of one month w.e.f. 19.01.2025.
The lecture was attended by Vice Chancellor, Prof. B J Rao, the IoE Director, Prof. Ghanashyam Krishna and esteemed guests across various Centres/Departments. The session opened with felicitating the Vice Chancellor, the IoE Director, and the distinguished speaker. After which, Prof. Arulmozi, Head, CALTS, introduced the speaker to the august audience. The event opened with the remarks from Prof. Ghanashyam Krishna who highlighted on the importance of the interdisciplinary collaborations in an academic environment and the role of IoE at University of Hyderabad in achieving that goal. Prof. B J Rao emphasized on the essential and educational role of the media and the timely need of academia to take notice of the same. These opening remarks were followed by the lecture titled Audiovisual Translation in The Streaming Era: Challenges and Opportunities.
Prof. Diaz-Cintas, an erudite scholar on audiovisual translation, opened his talk with drawing attention to the importance of visual narratives, and the various dynamics of accessible layers embedded within such narratives. He moved on to portray the historiography of the journey of visual narratives, with specific reference to audiovisual translation, from the silent era to the advanced practices of not only subtitling, and dubbing, but also of making knowledge and information accessible to the deaf, and blind community through audio description and accessible translation. He further detailed the international trends and practices followed worldwide for subtitling, dubbing, audio description; all with the intention of making information and knowledge available and accessible across communities overcoming multiple layers of socio-political, cultural, linguistic and physical challenges. Prof. Diaz-Cintas closed his lecture by emphasizing on the need of Indian academia now to join hands in the research works on audiovisual translation, especially audio description. Such initiatives would be beneficial for the vast majority of Indian population who is essentially multilingual.
The event closed with the vote of thanks that also expressed gratitude towards the Vice Chancellor, the IoE Director, and the Dean, School of Humanities for their constant timely support in all academic endeavours.
The event had been coordinated by Dr. Sriparna Das, CALTS.