On page 100 Fox says that "like spoken languages...each sign language chooses differently from the store of available handshapes, locations, and movements." She uses the example of the word "brother", saying that the same handshape is used to form the word in Taiwanese Sign Language as in British Sign Language, but not in ASL. I was wondering how closely related some sign languages are to each other overall. Fox mentions that ASL signers have to learn new handshapes or movements when they learn Chinese sign language, and that they will have a strong "accent"...but would it be easy for someone to pick up the new handshapes and movements and understand someone signing in Chinese Sign Language? And if they didn't learn the new handshapes and movements, how easy would it be to still understand it? Overall, how easy is it to translate across sign languages?
Comments (1)
I thought the element of accent in sign language was interesting, too. I never really thought about it before, but it makes sense that different sign languages would have nuances that differentiate it from others, and thus, also yield sign language accents. Having established that sign language is a legitimate language, I would think it shares some of the same constraints as translating spoken language. The ease with which translating between two sign languages would probably depend on how closely related the sign languages are. For instance, (I assume) it would be easier to translate Spanish to French since they are both Romantic languages. Likewise, it would be more difficult to translate English to Chinese given the different alphabet/character set, grammar, syntax, tones, etc. For sign language, translating from ASL to FSL should be easier, since ASL was founded upon FSL. Again, I'm making assumptions here, but they're logical assumptions. The accent with which signers sign with may make it more distracting to the listener, and therefore, harder to translate. Overall, though, I think sign language translation would "suffer" from the problems that afflict spoken/written language translation.
Posted by Brad Landgraf | April 18, 2008 11:37 AM
Posted on April 18, 2008 11:37