A Study of Characters’ Facial Expressions of Emotions: The Case of Iranian Audio Described Films

Audio description is one of the sub-branches of audiovisual translation, which has achieved significant growth in recent years. The current study examined the description of characters’ facial expressions of emotion in Persian audio described films. Facial expressions of emotions were initially analyzed based on Ekman and Friesen’s (2003) model. Next, we designed a questionnaire based on the proposed model and asked 50 participants to answer the questions. It was found that 60.18% of the emotions were lost in translation. The most frequently described emotions were sadness, surprise, anger, happiness and fear, in that order. The results of the first and second phases were consistent since the participants mentioned that the description of emotions were insufficient.