Hello, Writer with ASL translation request

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Bliss

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Hello. I'm a hearing author, working on my third book which features a deaf woman descended from the deaf population of Martha's Vineyard. I've long been interested in deaf culture, but I haven't yet learned ASL. I've recently connected with a professor from Gallaudet who is advising me on my book, but I have a short stanza of a song that I'm wondering if anyone would be willing to provide an ASL translation. It goes as follows:

The water is wide and I can't cross over
And neither have I wings to fly
Build me a boat that can carry two
And both shall row My love and I

On a related note, i'm wondering for deaf or HOH members, if your parents ever signed lullabies for you as children. If you are able to answer my question, please send me a Private message. Thanks very much for any assistance. I'm grateful to have found this site and for the spirit of openness and generosity among its members.

Thanks.

Bliss
 
why are you writing a book featuring a deaf character when you are not deaf and don't know ASL?
 
welcome to alldeaf

you can't private message limit on must to 50 posts. would be you share to your posts open discuss:)
you means on ASL talk translation? interesting!

they cannot speaking, I think guess homework?
 
Bliss said:
Hello. I'm a hearing author, working on my third book which features a deaf woman descended from the deaf population of Martha's Vineyard. I've long been interested in deaf culture, but I haven't yet learned ASL. I've recently connected with a professor from Gallaudet who is advising me on my book, but I have a short stanza of a song that I'm wondering if anyone would be willing to provide an ASL translation. It goes as follows:

The water is wide and I can't cross over
And neither have I wings to fly
Build me a boat that can carry two
And both shall row My love and I

On a related note, i'm wondering for deaf or HOH members, if your parents ever signed lullabies for you as children. If you are able to answer my question, please send me a Private message. Thanks very much for any assistance. I'm grateful to have found this site and for the spirit of openness and generosity among its members.

Thanks.

Bliss
Click to expand...

As Smithtr told you, you can't PM without a certain number of posts.

But signed lullabies? No...
 
"Lulllabye....and good night...
You'll have sweet dreams...tonight...
Lullabye....and good night...
Don't let the bed bugs bite!"
 
curious why didn't you visit Gallaudet and have interview with those Deaf, hoh or deaf oral students?"
 
The Water is Wide is a very difficult song to translate into ASL (or any other language) and keep it as "a song" because it has multiple meanings in each verse ... to translate it you'd have to choose a "line of meaning" (literal, metaphorical etc) and then stay with that...

You can't just use English word for ASL sign direct replacement.
 
Anij said:
The Water is Wide is a very difficult song to translate into ASL (or any other language) and keep it as "a song" because it has multiple meanings in each verse ... to translate it you'd have to choose a "line of meaning" (literal, metaphorical etc) and then stay with that...

You can't just use English word for ASL sign direct replacement.
Click to expand...

Thank you Anij for your reply. I have read a bit about the grammatical structure of ASL and understand that it's different from English, particularly sentence order, but I've also seen many youtube videos of ASL versions of popular songs, so I thought perhaps that the song could be translated not literally but in a way that captured the spirit if not the rhythm of the words..

To answer the question about why make a character deaf, my interest in deaf culture came from growing up on Martha's VIneyard and being picked up by a number of deaf drivers when I used to hitchhike a lot in the mid-80s. Nora Croce's book, Everyone Spoke Sign Language Here, had just come out and the drivers had it on the passenger seat next to them. From there, i met some older residents who remembered some of the signs used by the deaf community of Martha's Vineyard which had become large enough at its peak in the 19th century that 1 in 5 people were deaf and nearly everyone spoke sign language. When I decided to set a part of my novel in Martha's Vineyard in the 1930s, a young deaf woman appeared in my imagination and wouldn't leave.
.
 
Bliss said:
Thank you Anij for your reply. I have read a bit about the grammatical structure of ASL and understand that it's different from English, particularly sentence order, but I've also seen many youtube videos of ASL versions of popular songs, so I thought perhaps that the song could be translated not literally but in a way that captured the spirit if not the rhythm of the words..
Click to expand...

Just so you are aware - most (90%) of the "ASL Songs" on Youtube are horrifically done. They aren't actually ASL at all - they're word for word literal "translations" often done in SEE (Signed English). They are ASL students messing around with the language, or doing homework assignments. They think they are doing an ASL version of the song, but they're not.

Translating songs is very difficult, in fact ASL interpreters take special training in order to do it correctly ... (and not all fully qualified ASL interpreters will even take jobs that include songs, because of the skill set involved)
 
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