Toward a Deaf Translation Norm

7. The Deaf Translation Norm

165 Chapter 7 The Deaf Translation Norm This study examines the Deaf translation norm from a variety of different perspectives. Chapter 4 examines notions of identity and community and how the experiences of the T/Is inform the roles they take when rendering English into BSL. Chapter 5 examines the creation of the TL and describes the prosodic features of the TL, and chapter 6 examines the process of creating the TL, including the linguistic enrichments and impoverishments that occur to minimize cognitive effort for the TL audience. This final chapter draws together these different facets to describe the Deaf translation norm. Some notions of the Deaf translation norm are concerned with identity politics and the continuance of community values in a colonized context. Other notions of the Deaf translation norm are concerned with fluency and relating information to a constructed audience. The Deaf community has existed as an historical entity for some time. While this community may have been hidden from the mainstream, and in recent years has developed under the shadow of colonizers (oralists, missioners, welfare officers, etc.) (Ladd 2003), historical values have been passed down from generation to generation. The Deaf translation norm is born from a heterogeneous collective community where different members contribute skills to the collective and where the T/I is a member of the community. THE DEAF TRANSLATION NORM FROM THE PAST TO THE PRESENT DAY Deaf bilinguals have always contributed to their community by telling other Deaf people about wider society and by translating English documents (ranging from letters and newspapers to official correspondence and subtitled television broadcasts). These Deaf bilinguals would have been, and still are, members of the community, socialized within its norms. 166 : c h a p t e r 7 Deaf bilinguals witnessed other Deaf bilinguals contributing within the Deaf club, and Deaf individuals acted as role models. The skopos of the translation (Vermeer 1989) is to provide greater access to information in a way understandable to Deaf monolinguals. The preliminary norm (Toury 1978/1995) of the Deaf bilinguals and monolinguals involves choosing what is translated/retold. While the Deaf translation norm is something community-grown, the preliminary norm has changed somewhat. The interviews clearly show that the Deaf T/Is see the inclusion of Deaf people as T/Is within the media as a political process. The community does not select who is on television, whereas they would have selected whom they chose to translate their letters. Furthermore, many parts of television are judged to be areas where Deaf T/Is can work and should be working in preference to hearing T/Is, but hearing T/Is are chosen by mainstream institutions. The Changing Role of the DeafTranslation Norm Historically, the Deaf bilingual shared information and ensured Deaf monolinguals understood relevant information from the mainstream— the information being chosen either by the Deaf monolingual themselves or by the Deaf bilingual. In the television studio, the Deaf T/Is do not control which stories are chosen and have no control over the relevance of the stories to the community. But the role of the Deaf T/I within this environment is clearly different from that of a simple newsreader. The Deaf T/Is try to prepare as much as possible by watching the full news stories and video footage so they can edit the TL to be relevant and comprehensible in a domesticated TL (Venuti 1998). Often, more information is needed than what is contained in the English script to ensure an optimally relevant translation by the Deaf T/Is. They draw upon their knowledge of the Deaf audience to reflect the language the Deaf audience uses and to add relevant information. Presence in the DeafTranslation Norm The Deaf translation norm incorporates greater presence during the rendering of the information into the TL than other mainstream translation norms. This value contrasts to the mainstream notion of neutrality (Rudvin 2002). For the Deaf T/Is, they are not in a neutral environment because they experience the power of the hegemony on a daily basis. The Deaf Translation Norm : 167 Being more than just an interpreter reinforces and maintains a Deaf cultural space. The initial norm (Toury 1978/1995) is to create a domesticated TL text that does not look like a translation by being present in the re-telling of the information. The Deaf translation norm achieves this in several ways. First, the Deaf...