One Language, or Maybe Two: Direct Communication, Understanding, and Informal Interpreting in International Deaf Encounters
Temas
Detalles
In July 2007 I was sitting in a cavernous auditorium in a convention center in Madrid watching the opening ceremonies of the World Federation of the Deaf’s (WFD’s) quadrennial World Congress. At the conclusion of a visually sumptuous theatrical production, the actors on stage chanted, “sign language rights!” using International Sign (IS) vocabulary, and encouraged the audience to sign along with them. Dinakar,1 a Nepali delegate to the WFD with whom I was sitting, gamely joined in the chant, then turned to me and asked what the sign rights meant. I had understood because the sign articulated by the actors was identical to that used in American Sign Language (ASL). Although at the time I did not know the Nepali Sign Language (NSL) sign rights, I did my best to explain the meaning. I use the term informal interpreting to refer to how, as in the scene just described, signers at international deaf events ask for and offer translations or rewordings to facilitate their own and others’ understanding.
En: Friedner, M. y Kusters, A. (2015): It's a small world: international deaf spaces and encounters, pp. 70-82.