More Sign Language

Normally, people majoring in translation studies don’t have to justify themselves for choosing that course of studies. It’s considered to be both challenging and interesting. However, Sign Language students even have to struggle making people believe Sign Language is actually a real language. Considering all those statements like “I didn’t know you could study THAT…”, or “Gosh! You have to learn vocabulary too?” and not to forget “But what exactly takes so long learning that Taubstummensprache?”, I decided to dedicate another blog entry to Sign Language.

Above all, I want to stress Sign Language is a real, natural language like German, English and all other oral languages. It’s not a lingo for disabled people that some social worker invented, as many people seem to think. However, Austrian Sign Language is quite different to spoken German. There are other grammatical rules, other types of words and other ways to express certain ideas. Sure, there are some words that are similar and many signs even go with the German word, though of course there’s no need to say it aloud. You’d just form the German word with the mouth without vocalizing it. Still, there are too many differences too overlook the fact that Sign language is an individual language and is not to be confused with signed German.

A major difference between spoken languages and Sign Languages is that there is no written form of Sign Language. Researchers wanted, nevertheless, to put it down somehow, since that’s the only way to examine a language properly. Many different notation systems arose, but some of them are just too difficult to learn and are used as research tools only. The HamNoSys, for example is, in my opinion, a really hard and complicated way of writing down signs, though it’s surely very accurate.

Here you can look up how you'd write down the word "Dolmetscher".


While here at university everyone can write down the word signs as they want, we do have to follow rules when transcribing entire texts.
> All words have to be written in capital letters.
> there is a special way of putting down agreement verbs
> special signs go in quotation marks
…

Here’s an example: (The link didn’t work, but the corresponding video can be found at this page. Look for “Gebärdensprachkurse für Kinder starten wieder”)

GEBÄRDEN+SPRACH KURS IX-nach vorne unten KINDER WIEDER “starten” DANN AB OKTOBER IX-da [hmm] VEREIN KINDER+HÄNDE WIEDER WAS GEBÄRDEN+SPRACHE KURS AUCH SPIEL GRUPPE etc.
(I do not guarantee for the correctness :P)

However, if there’s no written form, what’s our counterpart to written exams or homework? We simply film ourselves with the equipment available in the media room. For example, while all of you had to do two written First Diploma Exams, we only had one written and the other one had to be recorded.

Anyway, note that translation is a bit tricky when it comes to Sign Language. In English for example it’s ok to say deaf and Sign Language, but in Austria the political correct terms are “Gerhörlose” and “Gebärdensprache”. Saying “taub” or “Zeichensprache” is considered to be pejorative, so make sure in advance that you know the corresponding words in both of your languages.

Sign Language Vocabulary

A big part of learning a language is, of course, learning new words. In order to do so many students keep glossaries, buy vocabulary learning books and tons of different dictionaries, like collocation dictionaries, monolingual dictionaries, bilingual dictionaries, phrasal verbs dictionaries etc. Obviously there are many words to gain and there are many ways to store them, but we are speaking here about spoken languages. How would you store signed words? That’s one of the frequently asked questions Sign Language students hear, so I thought why not answer it here and share my experiences with you, my language-interested fellow students.

Let’s start with the question of learning new words. Learning Sign Language words is a rather time-consuming process. Our teacher, a native speaker, prepares a vocabulary list with all the new expressions. He hands out these lists of German words and expressions and then signs each one, pausing after every word for us to write the it down. Now you’ll probably ask: How would you write down a signed word? I’ll give you an example: Here you can watch the Styrian sign for “April”. (By the way, the person on the viedo is one of the teachers at our department) I wrote the sign down like this:




As you can see I use a lot of abbreviation, describing exactly where the hand is, where it goes and how this movement looks like. Of course, everybody has his/her own system to remember the words. For example, better equipped students might film themselves signing, drawing talents might put down the word this way… It really doesn’t matter as long as you remember the word accurately, since small changes could change the word's meaning. Also, the facial expression needs to be remembered, especially the mouth gesture. Although in most cases the mouth forms soundlessly the German word, there are also words and expressions that require a special mouth gesture.

Ok, that’s it for now… Much as I’d love to tell you more about this wonderful language, I’m too tired right now.

See you tomorrow…