Re: ASL translation?

On Sep 10, 7:00 pm, Harold Weissman <Harold...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Mon, 10 Sep 2007 14:07:11 -0700, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
On Sep 10, 2:59 pm, Harold Weissman <Harold...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Mon, 10 Sep 2007 11:17:48 -0700, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
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.

So, a person who uses ASL for communicating, instead of
ordinary
speech, but who writes and reads in English, is effectively using two
different languages?

No, they _are_ using two different languages.

OK, fair enough.

If I speak English and write in English, I am using the same
language, right? How come that ASL is a totally different language?

Because ASL has nothing to do with English. It developed out of French
Sign Language early in the 19th century. I don't know where French Sign
Language came from, but French isn't a candidate.

Well, I guess that my question could be reformulated in terms of
the FSL.

Would
it not have been possible to map written English on to some sign
system, just as it is done with spoken English?

When you "map" English into signing, you're doing something called
"SEE," Signing Effective English IIRC, which is sort of a pidgin of ASL
vocabulary and English grammar. I wonder whether it's even found any
more.

I don't know what distinction you're looking for in "mapping" written
vs. spoken English.

I am talking about the correspondence between written and spoken
language. There is one (more than one, in fact) for English, but none for
ASL (ASL is not written) right?

A couple at least of writing systems have been devised for ASL. One is
based on linguistic analysis of the phonemes (called "cheremes"
because of etymology), the other attempts to be iconic. Neither is
used much.

I know that the mapping is in the
reverse direction (spoken language precedes written language) but since
ASL is an artificial language,

What do you mean by "artificial language"?

One like Esperanto.

Bad answer! What makes a language "like Esperanto"? Being assembled
out of bits and pieces of a handful of languages known to its creator,
and then being touted as "universal"?

I wonder why the mapping as not done? Is there something in speech vs.
signs that prevents it?-

What mapping?

I meant "is not done." I was just wondering why they did not take
spoken English and mapped it on to some sort of hand sign-based alphabet?-

But why? Deaf people didn't know spoken English! (And were generally
believed to be dumb -- that's why "dumb" means 'stupid' and not just
'speechless'.)

.

Relevant Pages

  • 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? ... Finnish, which follows the word order and grammar of Finnish. ...
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  • 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?
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  • 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)