While doing some online research into deafness, I ran across this YouTube video. It’s Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” set to American Sign Language:
The first part is a little unusual, but once the song gets going, it’s really quite something to watch the signs set to music. Anyway, I thought I’d share. Enjoy!
Okay, that was just weird.
First of all, I’m fluent in ASL (I’m deaf) and I didn’t understand fuck all of what those teeny-bopper ASL wannabe signers were saying. They were thinking far too much of the English lyrics, and just throwing out what seemingly were random signs.
They COMPLETELY disregarded facial expression and mouth movements. Those are huge parts of ASL grammar. They put far too much emphasis on wishy-washy, flowing arm movements.
The ASL sucked balls, but the special effects were pretty. Good job girls.
Is this the right forum? Is this just fantasy?
…I’m not sure, so I’ll send this to Cafe Society.
If you want to see a song translated into ASL… here’s a GREAT one:
This is way better than the Bohemian Rhapsody one.
Interesting… from there I ended up seeing quite a few others. As with any type of music, there is always room for differences of opinion as to what is ‘music’, regardless of whether a person is deaf or not. 
Out of curiosity, regarding the Marilyn Manson song, is it the lyrics you like, the music, the video, or all of the above? How do you experience this song? Is it through vibrations and the ASL?
Thanks!
That didn’t really look like sign language to me. It looked like a few signs mixed in with what was supposed to be expressive arm-waving. I don’t know anything about ASL really, but that didn’t look right.
Incidentally, this is a Finnish rapper called Signmark who raps in Finnish Sign Language. He’s one of the entries to represent Finland in the Eurovision song contest this year. I’m not sure this counts as a song translated into sign language, though, since it’s the original performance. 
The guy in the video was signing in ASL and not finnish sign language though.
As for the Manson video, I am on my macbook, and have the volume turned off, so I don’t really have the opportunity to ‘experience’ the vibrations of the song. I just watch the video and read the lyrics. I am also a very strongly English person, so I enjoy reading the lyrics, and seeing what the original artist was trying to put forth, then analyse the translation.
I really liked the Manson guy’s translation because he got really into it. He equally utilised ASL, facial expression and body language. I thought he did very well in expressing the overall tone of the song through his signing, body language and facial expression. My favourite part is:
Babble babble bitch bitch
Rebel rebel party party
Sex sex sex and don’t forget the “violence”
Blah blah blah got your lovey-dovey sad-and-lonely
This part is mind-blowingly PERFECT for ASL translation. He also really throws himself into the whole THIS IS THE NEW SHIIIIIIIIIIT part. The performer utilises simple–but effective–film-editing techniques/special effects (ie. role-shifting with different costumes, colours and etc.), costuming, makeup, and a very good translation in order to come up with a very highly visual video. And as I’m sure you’re already aware, Deaf people are first and foremost a visual people, so this video makes a very big impact.
Is ASL the new thing in emo? (regarding “Bohemian Rhapsody” - the Mason video was way cool)
Yeah, I thought that might be since the song’s lyrics are in English. Could you watch this other video of him and see if his sign language changes when the lyrics are Finnish? I don’t know enough about sign language to distinguish between different languages.
Here’s a fun song where the signer had not heard the song before signing it:
“I had a Shoggoth” by Tom Smith, signed by Judi Miller
I don’t know ASL, but I get the feeling she was making up half of those signs on the spot.
*** Ponder
The “I had a Shoggoth” song was actually interpreted fairly well… Because it was repetitious, once she had figured out how to sign each “phrase” … “I had a zombie, zombie went ‘brains’”, etc, she just had to keep repeating them…
The only criticism I had of her was that at the beginning she wasn’t interpreting what the singer was saying… but most likely there was no one Deaf in the audience, so she was just there “for show”, so it didn’t matter… She did invent a few things for what were obviously not real concepts, but that sort of suited the silly song…
The Bohemian Rhapsody was just bad. Period.
Agreed. The concept sounds kind of silly at first, but it can be really cool looking at some of those videos. It’s almost like a dance when the signer gets into it.
On a side note, I ran into this video from the Rhapsody one. Very simple, but also very beautiful and touching.
My God, that video had me in tears… The love and emotion just pours out. I hope her son is out of the hospital soon.
I was sure she was Deaf - her signing was flawless - then after checking her other videos, it turns out she’s a CODA ( Child of Deaf Adults ) - meaning ASL is her first language…
And if things aren’t bad enough for the poor woman, if you go to her page of videos, her father was killed a few weeks after she signed the song to her son. My heart goes out to her.
Admittedly, I haven’t done ASL in 20 years, but I couldn’t follow that. I did enjoy the first link, however.
Interesting, I don’t know ASL and I haven’t spent much time with people who do, but I wondered about this. I thought it might be hard to translate the song fluently into ASL. I’ve studied (spoken) foreign languages and I was trying to apply that experience here and it seemed like there wasn’t enough clear content in the signs. Admittedly I’m not familiar enough with ASL to make a definitive judgment about something like that, but it really seemed like there should me more there.
I imagine it would be a bit like hearing a non-native speaker of English covering “Bohemian Rhapsody” by translating the text from their native language and doing an iffy job. (And now I’m imagining what that would sound like :)).
Is reality?
Is maybe fantasy?
Stuck here in landslide
Can’t escape with realty
Open you eyeholes
look into the air
and see…
Anyway, nice to know my suspicion about this wasn’t completely off-base. Of course it’s hard to expect a person who just lost their hearing (as the video seems to show) to sign fluently right away. Heck, since she’s past the critical period for language acquisition I would expect her to always have a bit of an accent.
PS. Dug the Marilyn Manson.
I saw Sia perform Soon We’ll Be Found on Letterman. She sang and signed, I thought it was lovely, and the song is gorgeous.
I don’t know anything about good signing so can’t comment on that aspect
I’m not bad, but not quite fluent, in ASL, because my oldest son signs to communicate. And I recognized very few signs from the Queen video.