So you guys probably don’t know this. I bet you think the person signing is an interpreter, listening to the speaker, and signing. Nope. The person is Deaf. There’s an interpreter sitting in the front row that is hearing. That person is signing what the speaker is saying. The deaf person is watching that person, and signing in true ASL. Hearing people cannot sign with the fluency that a Deaf person can. So every you see someone signing at a press conference, 99% of time, that person is deaf.
15 Likes
2 Likes
Maybe Trump would understand something like this better:
There must be an SNL skit that could written around the idea of an English-to-Trump interpreter.
2 Likes
Here’s an interview with the GA guy himself where he explains this:
2 Likes
I was gonna ask for your take on it in general but I had no idea they were Deaf and would never have assumed that.
Yea its not common knowledge. I didn’t know until I was a teenager.
If hearing-able people aren’t able to sign as well as deaf people, then how could the deaf person signing to the audience (the CHI) be able to sign any more accurately than the person who actually heard the message?
1 Like
It’s like they are editing toddler-speak into English for people who can read at an eighth grade level.
Was it a Florida hurricane news conference a couple of years back where the guy was signing gibberish?
1 Like
Now we are getting somewhere. We could say the same for I don’t know what—maybe— texts written in ancient hebrew and Aramaic.
1 Like
The tape dropping two days before was cold blooded.
The hearing person is signing mostly word for word what the speaker is saying. Some words that exist in English don’t exist in ASL. (Like the word “the”.) Also, ASL has it’s own syntax. It’s based on the French language. The deaf person that’s signing is signing for the deaf community. The deaf community is relatively small so in a lot of cases, they know the signer. Especially if it’s a local broadcast or event. So it adds a layer of trust.
No it was some high level funeral in Africa. I think Nelson Mandela’s funeral? That shit was crazy. He signed for hours and no one vetted him. Dude was literally next to world leaders speaking LOL. He could have gone nuts and killed any of them if he had wanted to.
I still have a very hard time believing that a hearing person, through extensive training is unable to become good enough at signing that they couldn’t just listen and then sign exactly as a deaf person would. It’s just another language, and like with any other language fluency can be achieved if you work at it enough.
The trust issue makes more sense, but I don’t really get that either. It’s not like I mistrust non-native English speakers with accents who speak otherwise perfect English.
ASL is more about expression. You just aren’t going to learn all the little nuances that come with learning a foreign language. It’s like how some people say Coke, soda, or pop and are all talking about the same thing. Now imagine doing that in Chinese or whatever. There are regional dialects in different parts of the country. It isn’t simply like taking a word and giving it a sign.
The best way I can explain is watch this Under the Bridge music video. I’m sure you’ve heard it a million times. It’s about being addicted to coke and heroin. At the 2:45 mark, she demonstrates injecting herself with heroin and that feeling is coming up her arm and overwhelming her. She has a look basically saying “Oh no, what have I done?” But none of that is in the actual song Anthony Kiedis is singing. He doesn’t say “I injected heroin” or anything like that.
That woman’s name is Amber. She grew up hard of hearing but can hear the music with hearing aids.
As far as trust goes, a lot of deaf people do not trust the hearing world at all due to discrimination and stuff like that.
This is exactly my point. It is very difficult. But it’s not impossible. Take someone who speaks decent French. Now move them to Paris and have them live there for 10 years. With some effort, they could pick up on nearly all, if not all, of the nuance.
I guess I can buy that such people are rare and it’s just way easier to find a combo of a deaf person and a hearing person who is pretty good at signing. But I think that if you had a hearing person that was, for example, married to a deaf person and hung around a lot of deaf people , there is no reason they couldn’t learn it if they applied themselves.
It’s always nice to have things explained by people who are so steeped in the culture and have experience with the subjects they are explaining. How long did it take you to learn to sign?
3 Likes
It doesn’t matter how “steeped in the culture” one happens to be. What matters is that you make sense.
It would be one thing to say it is extremely hard for someone who is not deaf to sign like someone who is. It’s quite a different thing to say it’s impossible. How is this even controversial?
A hearing person will never truly be considered a part of deaf culture. I personally think that’s stupid, but it is what it is. I mean there’s a reason they do this instead of having the hearing person sign. The deaf community wants a deaf person up there, period.
My signing is average at best. I’m hard of hearing but grew up orally. I speak and can talk on the telephone. If I meet a deaf person that only communicates in ASL, they trust me more than a hearing interpreter even if that interpreter is more fluent in ASL than I am.
It’s just a different culture and hard to explain unless you experience it first hand.
2 Likes