# Sign Language Interpretation **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 27, 2011, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sign-language-interpretation/583453 "2011-05-27T17:43:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2011, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sign-language-interpretation/583453/21 "2011-05-29T22:32:09Z")
> [@CitizenPained](#): > > You misread. Maybe, maybe not. Maybe you didn’t put much detail into your choice of words. > [@](#): > > I was pointing out that ASL is a full and natural language and wondering if the OP didn’t know that, what with his views on deaf and communication. That I get. Thanks. I’m fully aware that ASL is an actual language. > [@](#): > > ASL is detail rich even in everyday talk. I mean…you can say a lot with just a few signs. Again, any language can be “detail rich in everyday talk,” depending on one’s choice of words. > [@](#): > > It is very visual. Of course it’s visual. That’s how the receiver observes the words uttered. Saying ASL is very visual is like saying English is very aural. > [@](#): > > So its possible that someone can look at a terp and think, oh, they must not be saying much. Or one could be listening to someone speaking in a language that does not have as many conjugations and declensions as one’s native language and saying, “Wow, they must not be saying much.” > [@](#): > > Like I said- sign for car, sign for road, indicate car moving, facial expression and spatial concepts appropriate and zing, that took all of 1/2 a second. Not all Signs in ASL (or any other Signed language, for that matter) are the visual equivalent of onomatopoetic words in an oral language. > [@](#): > > Translating word for word is silly. Like, if you said, “My nose is running”, ASL would ask, “to where??” Or, “I have a cold,” but translating word for word would puzzle people as you cannot own a cold. It’s fairly well-known among us linguists and translators that “word for word” translations are nigh on impossible. > [@](#): > > It is detail-rich. The specific signs a non user can pick out is only a small part. The rest is in the details. See above. ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2011, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sign-language-interpretation/583453/22 "2011-05-29T22:39:43Z")
> [@CitizenPained](#): > > Like the supposed sign for Obama. in ASL, I could make the B next to my ear, then O while making a small o with my mouth and I just indicated not only who I was talking about, but subliminally conveyed he’s a skinny man with big ears (depending on how it was signed) as signaling the ear can mean a non deaf person, the small o is skinny, and use of first initial is common when talking about a non deaf person. So yeah, visual languages are rich in detail. Kind of like reading Chinese characters. Can’t be boring if you’re fluent. Well, over here in Korea, there are a few people named Lee Myeong-bak; however, if you say _Two Em Bee_, everyone knows you’re referring to the current president of the country. That’s pretty “detail rich” for three syllables. Personally, I think you’re confusing your own local slang expressions with the language as a whole. Not everyone observes their surroundings the same way, not even those speaking the same language in the same region. From your posts in this thread, though, I’d guess that you might be interested in a branch of Linguistics that I like: [Pragmatics](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pragmatics). Here’s the beginning of that entry on the Wiki (with the annotations removed): > [@](#): > > Pragmatics is a subfield of linguistics which studies the ways in which context contributes to meaning. Pragmatics encompasses speech act theory, conversational implicature, talk in interaction and other approaches to language behavior in philosophy, sociology, and linguistics. It studies how the transmission of meaning depends not only on the linguistic knowledge (e.g. grammar, lexicon etc.) of the speaker and listener, but also on the context of the utterance, knowledge about the status of those involved, the inferred intent of the speaker, and so on. In this respect, pragmatics explains how language users are able to overcome apparent ambiguity, since meaning relies on the manner, place, time etc. of an utterance. The ability to understand another speaker’s intended meaning is called pragmatic competence. So an utterance describing pragmatic function is described as metapragmatic. Pragmatic awareness is regarded as one of the most challenging aspects of language learning, and comes only through experience. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2011, 10:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sign-language-interpretation/583453/23 "2011-05-30T10:38:55Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > When I watch the morning news before going to work, there is a sign language interpreter in the corner of the screen. Is she giving a word for word interpretation, or just relaying the basic ideas behind the stories? Any translator/interpreter who works word by word is, excuse my language, a piece of shit. Even within very close languages, “word by word” translation doesn’t quite work: there will be differences in grammar, idioms, etc. which simply don’t work well word by word. A couple of years ago I took a sabbatical and spent it taking a graduate course in Translation in a university that’s got a large BSL section (it’s in the UK, so BSL and not ASL). According to the teachers, including one who’s Deaf, newscasts interpreters usually get to see what the news will be about beforehand, so they have more time to prepare a correct translation than if they were working on the fly. Per the Deaf professor, those interpreters speak a very “beige” BSL, they tend to spell things out more than someone speaking BSL normally and avoid any dialectal expressions. As an example of something which just doesn’t translate literally between English and BSL, she told us that BSL does not have a verb equivalent to “to be”. I found that quite interesting: a lot of Romance languages have two, English one, BSL none. She translated “Am I speaking too fast?” as word-by-word as possible (I speak too fast?) and at the speed at which one of those newscasters would speak it (Iiiii speeeeeak tooooo faaaaast?), then said it the way she’d normally say it: “I quick?” ---
**Author:** ![YaraMateo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/58f4c7/32.png) [@YaraMateo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YaraMateo)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2011, 10:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sign-language-interpretation/583453/24 "2011-05-30T10:59:08Z")
I find it weird they have that instead of closed captioning. I would think someone doing sign language kind of hold things up and it would just be cheaper to do closed captioning. ---
**Author:** ![Gary\_Robson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gary_robson/32/3448_2.png) [@Gary\_Robson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_Robson)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2011, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sign-language-interpretation/583453/25 "2011-05-30T15:08:51Z")
> [@YaraMateo](#): > > I find it weird they have that instead of closed captioning. I would think someone doing sign language kind of hold things up and it would just be cheaper to do closed captioning. Ideally, they would do both. That’s what we’ve done at a number of live events with large deaf audiences. Prelingually-deaf people typically learn ASL first. Since there’s no written equivalent, they go on to learn English later. They can keep up with very fast ASL (since it’s their native language), but may not be able to keep up when reading fast English closed captions (since they’re reading in their second language). To provide optimal accessibility, it’s appropriate to have both ASL and captions. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2011, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sign-language-interpretation/583453/26 "2011-05-30T15:34:32Z")
I have a friend who teaches at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C. All the classes there are taught in ASL. She’s not deaf, but she’s taught there for eleven years now. She learned ASL as she started teaching there. An example of how natural signing is to her now is something that happened recently when a group of us, none of whom were deaf or knew ASL other than her, were in an incredibly noisy restaurant. We had to practically shout as we talked to each other. Without even noticing what she was doing, she began signing as she talked. It was as though she unconsciously thought to herself, “They can’t hear me, so I’ll sign,” although of course we didn’t actually understand any of what she was signing. She tells us that despite her fluency, she is not a simultaneous translator. If she is in a situation where someone who does not sign has to speak to a deaf group, she can’t reliably interpret for him as he talks. He would have to write out what he was going to say. She would study it beforehand to determine how to translate what he was saying, and then she would have to read the text and sign as he talked. ---
**Author:** ![YaraMateo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/58f4c7/32.png) [@YaraMateo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YaraMateo)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2011, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sign-language-interpretation/583453/27 "2011-05-30T16:23:28Z")
[quote=“Gary “Wombat” Robson, post:25, topic:583453”] Ideally, they would do both. That’s what we’ve done at a number of live events with large deaf audiences. Prelingually-deaf people typically learn ASL first. Since there’s no written equivalent, they go on to learn English later. They can keep up with very fast ASL (since it’s their native language), but may not be able to keep up when reading fast English closed captions (since they’re reading in their second language). To provide optimal accessibility, it’s appropriate to have both ASL and captions. [/QUOTE] Makes sense for live television/events. I never thought that ASL and English are differen.t :smack: Thanks for explaining. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2011, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sign-language-interpretation/583453/28 "2011-05-30T16:38:12Z")
Personally, I can’t understand how anyone is able to simultaneously interpret any language. It just seems like it’d be too much to fit into one brain at once: I’d think that they’d at least need to wait for the speaker to pause for a moment and relay what he just said, rather than actually doing it at the same time. But then, people do actually do it, so there you go. The human brain is a truly amazing thing. ---
**Author:** ![Daffyd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/daffyd/32/8923_2.png) [@Daffyd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Daffyd)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2011, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sign-language-interpretation/583453/29 "2011-05-30T17:01:15Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Personally, I can’t understand how anyone is able to simultaneously interpret any language. It just seems like it’d be too much to fit into one brain at once: I’d think that they’d at least need to wait for the speaker to pause for a moment and relay what he just said, rather than actually doing it at the same time. I used to do Sign Language Interpreting - and although I wouldn’t say I was the best, I found it very robotic. The information is going in, getting changed into ASL and signed. I also found it unbelieveably boring… That was why I decided to teach Deaf kids instead of continuing to be an interpreter. (I also think that’s why I wasn’t that great an interpreter to be honest - it just wasn’t for me - and the clients deserved better…) Good interpreters are always a bit behind what a speaker is saying - they need to be able to figure out what exactly the person is talking about to change it properly into ASL - if you’re signing simultaneously, it means you’re mainly following English, and NOT doing a good job. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2011, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sign-language-interpretation/583453/30 "2011-05-30T17:17:32Z")
> [@](#): > > Good interpreters are always a bit behind what a speaker is saying - they need to be able to figure out what exactly the person is talking about to change it properly into ASL - if you’re signing simultaneously, it means you’re mainly following English, and NOT doing a good job. Even at that, though, you still have to have part of your brain working on what the speaker said a few moments ago (which you’re currently outputting as sign) and part of your brain working on what the speaker is saying right this moment (which you’ll be outputting as sign a few moments from now). I have a hard time grasping that sort of compartmentalization. ---
**Author:** ![AboutAsWeirdAsYouCanGet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/22d042/32.png) [@AboutAsWeirdAsYouCanGet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AboutAsWeirdAsYouCanGet)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2011, 8:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sign-language-interpretation/583453/31 "2011-05-31T08:21:14Z")
> [@](#): > > Prelingually-deaf people typically learn ASL first. Since there’s no written equivalent, they go on to learn English later. They can keep up with very fast ASL (since it’s their native language), but may not be able to keep up when reading fast English closed captions (since they’re reading in their second language). Actually sadly that is not true. Quite a few do learn ASL as their first language, especially if they have Deaf parents, but there is a debate over whether a dhh (deaf or hard of hearing) kid’s first language should be spoken English or ASL. This is sadly a debate that has been going on for hundreds of years. However, even oral kids can have significent reading and writing difficulties, especially since most of them only get preschool/early childhood deaf ed intervention, and are dumped into a mainstream sped system that tends to be mostly experianced with kids with ADD or learning disabilties. ☹ ---
**Author:** ![Daffyd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/daffyd/32/8923_2.png) [@Daffyd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Daffyd)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2011, 12:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sign-language-interpretation/583453/32 "2011-05-31T12:20:31Z")
> [@AboutAsWeirdAsYouCanGet](#): > > Quite a few do learn ASL as their first language, especially if they have Deaf parents, but there is a debate over whether a dhh (deaf or hard of hearing) kid’s first language should be spoken English or ASL. Well, the reality is Deaf kids can’t have spoken English as their first language. Since they are Deaf, they can’t hear English so can’t pick it up auditorally, so have to rely on some kind of signing - and Signed English isn’t a language, so that can’t be their first language. No one is saying Deaf kids shouldn’t learn English, but they need some kind of base to build on - and memorizing every word and word ending in English isn’t the way. I can have almost any discussion I want with Deaf kids in ASL - we can talk about what happened in Japan, Osama Bin Laden, the price of gas going up, and even why learning English is important. Change that discussion into English and it will come to a halt - there won’t BE a discussion - because English as a first language doesn’t work for Deaf kids… Now hard of hearing kids are a different story - they can hear enough to follow English in most cases - or with some help can get it - and English is their first language - or here in California, for many, Spanish is. Some of my HofH kids speak English/Spanish and can sign - but they aren’t the same as Deaf kids. Most of the debate over ASL/English has always been by hearing teachers and parents who can’t or won’t learn to sign. It’s much easier to try to change the kids than to accept them as they are. ---
**Author:** ![Gary\_Robson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gary_robson/32/3448_2.png) [@Gary\_Robson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_Robson)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2011, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sign-language-interpretation/583453/33 "2011-05-31T15:25:25Z")
> [@AboutAsWeirdAsYouCanGet](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > Prelingually-deaf people typically learn ASL first. Since there’s no written equivalent, they go on to learn English later. They can keep up with very fast ASL (since it’s their native language), but may not be able to keep up when reading fast English closed captions (since they’re reading in their second language). > > Actually sadly that is not true. Quite a few do learn ASL as their first language, especially if they have Deaf parents, but there is a debate over whether a dhh (deaf or hard of hearing) kid’s first language should be spoken English or ASL. It is very difficult to make a prelingually-deaf child’s first language spoken English. ASL is far easier to teach to a deaf child. I assume you’re referring to HoH children rather than “big-D” Deaf? ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2011, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sign-language-interpretation/583453/34 "2011-05-31T17:31:45Z")
Actually, there has been a hot debate over insisting in forcing big-D Deaf kids to learn to work orally (lipread and speak) rather than learn Sign pretty much since the first time someone noticed this was possible. I remember a thread where someone talked about being forced to NOT use Sign at school, they had to behave as orally as possible: what happened was that the kids pretty much came up with a different Sign Language. Will search for it. Poking around Spanish webpages to find information about accesibility brought up similar horror stories, in a country that happens to have one of the oldest known Sign Languages ☹ The idea that by doing this you’re basically forcing these people into dumbness (in the “slow processing” meaning; I mean, if I have problems understading someone with a bushy moustache and a thick accent, how much more they?) by refusing to accept that it makes more sense for them to speak with their hands is, as **Daffyd** says, a matter of refusing to accept that this person is different from what their parents/society were expecting. I’ve seen people do that with a kid born “the wrong gender” (both boys and girls), so I don’t have much of a problem picturing someone doing that with a deaf or blind kid. ---
**Author:** ![Gary\_Robson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gary_robson/32/3448_2.png) [@Gary\_Robson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_Robson)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2011, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sign-language-interpretation/583453/35 "2011-05-31T17:34:46Z")
I’ve seen that, too, **Nava** , and it’s always bothered me. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2011, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sign-language-interpretation/583453/36 "2011-05-31T17:44:48Z")
Not exactly what I had in mind, but check out [posts 5 and 15](http://http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=518445) The hubbub when Gallaudet chose a President who had learned Sign as an adult, despite being deaf, the child of a deaf mother and sister to a deaf brother: she’d been taught orally until she was 23. [Thread from GQ](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=392802), [thread from the Pit](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=394144). [This other Pit thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=473973), started by a parent whose child got cochlear implants (turning her from deaf-as-a-brick into hard-of-hearing), has a lot of information on oralist, exclusively-oralist, sign-based and “we’re Deaf and proud of it” mindsets and methodologies. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2011, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sign-language-interpretation/583453/37 "2011-05-31T18:02:09Z")
Looking for something else, I just found information on someone (Juan de Pablo Bonet) who wrote a treatise on how to teach a deaf kid orally published in 1620. The teacher refused to acknowledge any signing on the kid’s part except for a signed alphabet he’d invented ad-hoc - and this was in Spain… I would have serious problems speaking with my hands tied behind my back and I’m not deaf, just Spanish! ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2011, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sign-language-interpretation/583453/38 "2011-05-31T18:29:29Z")
> [@Polycarp](#): > > On another board I frequent, a member is a bright 18-year-old boy who was born profoundly deaf. He posts in English words (mixed with a few ‘texting’ shortcuts – he is after all 18!) But he thinks, and writes, in ASL syntax, making his posts sometimes quite intriguing to parse out. I experienced this quite a bit when I was a relay operator. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sign-language-interpretation/583453.md?page=1)