The Amsterdam Manifest

[Ulrike Zeshan]

Dear all,

I have a concern with this proposal that several other people have raised
as well, i.e.: why ASL and BSL? I am however talking here from a different
perspective of someone who works in developing countries. And the fact is
that ASL and BSL are definitely NOT widely understood all over the world.
If they are widely understood at all (which is, I think, an empirical
question), this is only so within the Western hemisphere. In other parts of
the world, except those where the local sign language is based on ASL
(parts of Africa and Southeast Asia) or BSL (Australasia) this is not the
case. Deaf signers from the Indian Subcontinent, Arabic countries, China,
Turkey etc.etc. are definitely NOT fluent in ASL/BSL, nor do they
understand international sign.

Now the main point is this: As someone working in such areas, I predict
that before long, we are going to see deaf researchers in these countries
too. Under these circumstances, having ASL and BSL as conference languages
would exclude most people from developing countries and would disadvantage
those who undoubtedly need the most support in terms of interpreting
services. For a Pakistani, Vietnamese or Iraqi organization, it will be
extremely hard if not impossible to organize interpreting services for
their conference participants. What are they going to think when deaf
people from the rich countries get interpreting services in sign languages
they understand, and deaf people from poor countries get no such support?
Unfortunately, all these issues are not just practical problems but deeply
political issues, and we have to think about what kind of a signal we will
send out to other parts of the world by our decisions. It doesn't seem
right to me that the most needy people will also be the most disadvantaged.
Another point is that even if deaf people from developing countries are
ready to learn ASL/BSL for conference purposes, it is again them who will
have the least chances of all of getting enough exposure to these sign
languages to be able to follow conference proceedings.

My hope for the future is that not only will conferences be more
'deaf-friendly', but also that they will become truly international. I felt
quite a difference in the atmosphere between Brisbane 1999 (the World
Federation of the Deaf World Congress) and the two TISLR's I have been to
so far, which were largely dominated by Western countries (including
researchers from Western countries working on non-Western sign languages).
Being one of the latter researchers, I am of course also guilty myself...

What is the alternative then? I actually thought the proposal that came up
seomtime during the conference was quite good. I.e., use the local signed
language of whatever country the conference is held in (and I think no-one
has objected to this), and then make a real coordinated effort to get
together groups of deaf people from various places to share the same
interpreters and the costs. And note that one could do something very
similar to what is proposed in the manifest, i.e. as many deaf people as
you like could opt for using ASL or BSL interpreting. This could solve some
of the problem, but would not send out a political signal that directly
disadvantages deaf people from other regions.

Excuse me for this rather long message. And just not to be misunderstood by
the manifest authors: I am NOT saying that you are racists and you want to
exclude developing countries. I am just explaining what I think would be
the impact of such a decision on developing countries.

Best to all,

Ulrike


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Dr. Ulrike Zeshan
Research Fellow
Research Centre for Linguistic Typology
La Trobe University
Bundoora VIC 3083
Australia
ph. +61-3-94673084
fax +61-3-94673053
u.zeshan at latrobe.edu.au
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