[Multilingual Monday] The Art Of Translation: The ASL Edition
Click to viewA quickie here that relates to the concert that wasn't this past weekend -- above is a duet of ASL signers doing their own interpretations of their respective parts of "I Need You Now" by Lady Antebellum. As we look at the chorus -- interpreted differently by both signers, you can see vast differences in style, word choice, etc. And this is because tarnslation is just as much of an art form as it is a science.
This is because of the rarity of a language having exact correlations with one another. Even IF there's a closer correlation, one needs to ask: would a more literal translation be fitting here? This might be fine for, say, an academic paper, but for prose, dialogue, or poetry this can seem bizarre and unnatural. Especially in the case of a song or a poem, giving an exact meaning can drain that piece of its meter or even its soul. And this doesn't take into account double meanings, nuances, or even an assumed cultural knowledge.
Here we can see vast differences in ASL and English, meaning that something more exact is NOT helpful in this instance. With both signers we see use of placing items and even concepts in "space" (a great example is the female signer when she interprets "I'd rather be hurt than feel nothing at all" by placing "HURT" and "FEEL NOTHING" into separate spaces, and then saying that she'd prefer the space with HURT), grammatical markers indicated by facial gestures, and more. But even then, they are quite different in their interpretations.
So this is free reign: ASL? Translation? Interpretation? Go for it gents.