Quick question about sign language

[ffutures]

I don't know sign language. If I write a scene where both characters in a dialogue are using it, should the text be normal English with contractions etc., or would it be more stripped down and / or basic? ASL, if it makes any difference.

Comments

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

If you wrote a scene in which both characters were speaking German, how would you represent that? You're translating from ASL into English; translating an ASL conversation sign-by-sign is going to read like gibberish. "Car, you drive? Variety?" "I Ford drive. Like very much."

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

Via James Nicoll's friendslist, which I'm browsing because my own book isn't writing itself right now. Just in case you are wondering who this stranger is.

I am mentally translating what I type into ASL, which is kind of funny (probably funnier to someone fluent in ASL, as my ASL is quite poor!)

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

It will be written as English dialogue - I'm simply wondering if it would be like normal spoken dialogue, or slightly more formal e.g. no contractions. Elsewhere I've been told no contractions, so I'm going to go with that unless someone tells me otherwise.

[nelc.livejournal.com]

I don't know sign language at all, but from watching e.g. Stephen Fry's recent language programmes, it seems to me that body language can be as variable as tone and other markers in spoken language. Certainly you can have very precise movements or casual and even sloppy movements applied to the same sign, which would be read as respectively formal and casual language, it seems to me. So my instinct would be to go with contractions if it suits the person and situation.

But on the gripping hand, you should probably go with what reads right to a signing-as-a-first-language person.

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

I think using no contractions in an English-language translation of an informal ASL sign language conversation would give a mistaken impression of the tone of the conversation. There's tremendous range in formality in ASL, at a far higher level of granularity than in English.

But, yeah, I am a native English speaker with only limited ASL fluency, so if a native ASL speaker thinks that contractions feel wrong for a translation, they are the person to follow.

[armb.livejournal.com]

I know ci5rod has being studying ASL recently, if he doesn't comment here it might be worth asking him.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I think I'm probably OK - I got a very swift response elsewhere.

[ci5rod.livejournal.com]

Actually it was BSL I was learning. There isn't particularly a written representation (well, there is, but only for the purposes of the sign dictionary), and the sentence structure is definitely not the same as English (I believe it has German roots, in fact), so I guess you would handle it like any other translation.

[secondsilk.livejournal.com]

In Morris Gleitzman's Blabbermouth, he writes the dialogue of the signing characters in fluent English. It's a translation from one complete language to another complete language. Gleitzman mostly uses standard dialogue tags, too.

(This was Auslan. ALS has more in common with French sign language than British sign language, but the principle holds.)

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Thanks - I'm going with a slightly more formal version of spoken english, avoiding contractions.