My ASL Assignment

'Now run along, and don't get into mischief. I am going out.'

Last night we were given an assignment to translate a children's story book. We were allowed to pick one book out of a pile my teacher had dumped on a table. I have always loved Beatrix Potter, so I chose The Tale of Peter Rabbit. I was thinking there would be lots of fun action and so on.



Now I'm in the process of translating English to ASL. I'm finding this a most difficult task mainly because there are times words will not adequately convey an action. For example, the act of placing a "sieve" over Peter becomes an exercise in establishing a classifier to indicate the sieve, then placing the imaginary sieve over a rabbit. There are simply no words for this, and I'm at a loss. So-- I've written on paper how I would handle it in ASL, and I hope that satisfies her.



She's Deaf, by the way.



My husband said the other day that he read somewhere (yeah I know, don't quote me on this) that the English language has about four times the number of words, compared to all other languages. He was surprised by this fact, and so was I. The British also have a tendency to be wordy compared to Americans. I've heard British complain about the inadequacies of American vocabularies, as some studies have indicated that even British children have a much expanded vocabulary over American adults. As a culture Brits seem to LOVE words and tend to use new adjectives and word plays much more in their everyday communications-- which we Americans see as the endearing British wit.



I had never thought about it before, but I'm now finding this story written by Beatrix Potter , a Brit, overly wordy for children, maybe because I have to translate it into ASL. This is HARD.



Sentences such as, "Peter was most desperately frightened," have turned into "Peter scared!" But again that isn't sufficient, since there are ways of signing levels of fear that don't translate. We learned the word for "very" last night, since it was in the book, but my ASL teacher said to disregard it. Not needed. Deaf people don't use it since they show the concept of "very" in their Deaf expressions. Interesting. I had been wondering about this for awhile.



The second half of the assignment will be to tell our stories to the class. We all suck at fingerspelling, so we are to present the story as if we're telling it to children who don't yet read. No fingerspelling. All the characters are to be given name signs and words we haven't learned can't be used. This gives you an example of where we're at in ASL. We're like children. I openly admit all your fingers look like a blur to me when you fingerspell.



Personally I think this is a wonderfully challenging assignment. Not only am I learning ASL syntax, but it also sends home the point of how difficult translation can be between English and ASL. I have a new found appreciation for those of you who vlog and transcribe or caption. It isn't easy!

Global Language Monitor http://www.languagemonitor.com/wst_page7.html

Slate http://www.slate.com/id/2139611/

Ask Oxford http://www.askoxford.com/asktheexperts/faq/aboutenglish/mostwords?view=uk