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Abstract

This article positions audio description (AD) as a critical site for assessing the cross-linguistic transportability of Netflix’s Inclusion Strategy — a commitment to embedding an inclusion lens in hiring, commissioning, and storytelling. It examines how this inclusionary imaginary is re-articulated when AD is tasked with verbalizing a diverse storyworld, particularly when produced in languages other than that of the original audiovisual text. Using as a test case, the study offers a comparative micro-analysis of four AD tracks (British English, Metropolitan French, Peninsular Spanish, and Latin American Spanish) for the dialogue-free opening of the first episode, where the series’ racial desegregation (“the Great Experiment”) is established. The analysis shows that diversity is unevenly verbalized across languages in the selected excerpts. This suggests that Netflix assumes its U.S.-centric inclusionary imaginary circulates transnationally and cross-linguistically as universally intelligible, and thus requires no explicit articulation in its guidelines, despite the cultural and linguistic specificity of the issues it encodes. As a result, the task of rendering these ideological commitments is effectively displaced onto largely un(der)credited localization workflows, where, in the absence of clear guidance, they are variably interpreted, reformulated, or muted.

© John Benjamins Publishing Company
Available under the CC BY 4.0 license.
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/content/journals/10.1075/etc.25017.dec
2026-05-26
2026-06-07

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/content/journals/10.1075/etc.25017.dec
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Transportable audio descriptions of diversity?
John Benjamins ; https://doi.org/10.1075/etc.25017.dec
/content/journals/10.1075/etc.25017.dec
/content/journals/10.1075/etc.25017.dec
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  • Article Type: Research Article
Keywords: Netflix Inclusion Strategy ; localization ; Julia Quinn ; Shonda Rhimes ; Subscription Video-On-Demand (SVOD) ; media accessibility ; diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) ; audio description (AD) ; onscreen representation of diversity ; intersemiotic translation ; streaming platform ; Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story ; color-conscious casting

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