Audiovisual translation, in its different genres, is all about making visual, aural and verbal messages meaningful to people who, otherwise, would not gain full access to the complex audiovisual whole. By living in a society that is so image bound, translators are usually fully versed in decoding images but find it difficult to understand the full dimension of the aural components in film.

As Monaco (1977:179) reminds us, sound is so pervasive that we tend to discount it, and it may take some “training” to raise awareness and to develop the skills needed in the de-coding/re-coding process that goes with conveying complex multi-medial messages through verbal codes, an exercise that is paramount when working on SDH, for instance.