Toward a Deaf Translation Norm

2. Identity and Language

25 Chapter 2 Identity and Language The issues of identity, fluency, and language are pivotal in understanding the different features T/Is bring to translation and interpreting. This chapter examines notions of bilingualism within the Deaf community for both Deaf and hearing people born into the community, as well as those who are outsiders, to provide a way to explore and discuss how identity influences translation and interpretation. Notions of translation, power, and politics will be explored to highlight how they relate to notions of equivalence ; the ideas of authorship and gatekeeping also will be explored. Finally, specific issues of text linguistics and cohesion will be addressed, highlighting areas where first language competence may be evident. The fields of translation and interpreting studies examine cultural bias in the SL and the TL, representation of minority voices, and authorship (Hatim and Mason 1990; Venuti 1995). The relatively recent emergence of Deaf people interpreting on television has encouraged some debate by Deaf broadcasters and their allies about whether hearing interpreters should be working in this area at all (Duncan 1997). Interestingly, there has been scant interaction with the Deaf community to elicit their views on the validity of the interpreting seen on television, even though this is a public display of their language and culture. Although the community is a collective community (Smith 1996), no attempt has been made to achieve consensus on who should be undertaking BSL interpreting and translation on television. Likewise, no move has been made to try and give a voice to the Deaf community or their collective understanding of how their language should be represented on television, on the Web, and in the translation of public service documents. Anecdotally, some Deaf T/Is have said television should be the sole domain of Deaf T/Is as it is an accessible situation for Deaf people to interpret, because of the use of the autocue (teleprompter). The claim that only Deaf T/Is can provide an appropriate (linguistically and culturally sensitive) translation into BSL provides one dimension of this debate. It is important to examine the issue of identity and levels of bilingualism with this in mind. 26 : c h a p t e r 2 LEVELS OF BILINGUALISM WITHIN THE DEAF COMMUNITY Although the Deaf community is a bilingual community, not all members of the community have a high degree of fluency in English (Woll 2000, 71). Their first or preferred language is BSL, and their fluency in English can vary. In fact, some Deaf people could be described as semilingual in that they do not have full fluency in either BSL or English, where semilingualism is the condition of not being able to fully express one’s emotions or of not being fully affected by a given language (Winsa 1998, 128; see also Hinnenkamp 2005 and Skutnabb-Kangas 1981). Despite evidence that D/deaf children have higher levels of English literacy with even moderate fluency in a signed language (Strong and Prinz 1997), oralism (education of D/deaf children using speechreading and speech production) still persists. Not only does this education deny deaf children (depending on their hearing loss) access to acquiring the only natural face-to-face communicative language they can perceive (a visual one),1 but it also denies them the choice of socializing within both the hearing and Deaf worlds in their adult lives (Zaitseva, Pursgrove, and Gregory 1999). Although all Deaf people experience the world visually (when not using hearing aids), we might expect to find language differences arising from their age of acquisition of sign languages, their degree of deafness, and their exposure to the Deaf community. As mentioned earlier, Deaf children with Deaf parents have exposure to the language from birth, and this typically can be different from D/deaf2 children of hearing parents (Harris 2001). Early versus Late Acquisition Mayberry (1995) compared the different linguistic abilities of Deaf people who have acquired sign language as a natural first language from their parents, early learners of sign language, and late learners of sign language . She found that native users of ASL made semantic lexical intrusion 1. Written English is perceivable in the form of notes and subtitles but cannot be naturally acquired without tuition. 2. Here D/deaf is used because it is not guaranteed that a deaf child born to a hearing family will become Deaf in terms of using a sign language and mixing in the Deaf community. [18.118.12.222] Project MUSE (2024-04-23...