Re: ASL translation?

On Sep 10, 2:13 pm, Harold Weissman <Harold...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Is the process of communicating through ASL analogous to a
translation? Let me give you an example.

No, it _is_ translation.

Assume that I have a text T in English. A person A, conversant in
ASL, reads the text and communicates it to another person B on the fly in
ASL. B commits it to writing in English, producing a text T'.

My question is, How similar are T and T' likely to be? If we do
the same thing with, say, English and Russian, the final English text can
comically differ from the original English text - I guess you guys are
familiar with the story (apocryphal, but illustrative anyway) about "The
spirit is strong but the flesh is weak" being changed into "The vodka is
good but the meat is rotten" after following the English -> Russian ->
English route.

Is something like that possible in English -> ASL -> English?

Certainly. English and ASL are grammatically about as different as
languages can get -- they're practically at the extreme ends of
various typological continua.

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: ASL translation?
    ... ASL, reads the text and communicates it to another person B on the ... B commits it to writing in English, ... How come that ASL is a totally different language? ... just as it is done with spoken English? ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: ASL translation?
    ... ASL, reads the text and communicates it to another person B on the ... B commits it to writing in English, ... How come that ASL is a totally different language? ... just as it is done with spoken English? ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: ASL translation?
    ... ASL, reads the text and communicates it to another person B on the fly ... B commits it to writing in English, ... How come that ASL is a totally different language? ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: ASL translation?
    ... ASL, reads the text and communicates it to another person B on the ... B commits it to writing in English, ... How come that ASL is a totally different language? ... just as it is done with spoken English? ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: ASL translation?
    ... ASL, reads the text and communicates it to another person B on the fly in ... B commits it to writing in English, ... Herman Rubin, Department of Statistics, Purdue University ...
    (sci.lang)
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