The Amsterdam Manifest

[Nobukatsu Minoura]

Dear all!

Let me just talk about the situation with the Japanese researchers.

As for Japanese deaf researchers, it's extremely difficult to find enough
(in number) and competent JSL-English interpreters.  We'd have to go
indirectly like JSL-Japanese-English.  It's totally different from the
situations with the European deaf researchers.

OR they can hire JSL-ASL interpreters and even JSL-International Sign
interpreters.  But I didn't see too many SL-to-SL interpreters at TISLR7.
Am I wrong?

There are a few Japanese deaf researchers who can present papers in ASL
and/or International Sign, but they are exceptions.

And as for Japanese hearing researchers, they cannot attend an international
conference if they don't speak and understand English or ASL.  And this is
the case for many of the Japanese hearing researchers.



on 00.8.23 2:02 AM, Ulrike Zeshan at u.zeshan at latrobe.edu.au wrote:
> 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...

How was the WFD congress in Brisbane?  Were there enough and competent
SL-to-SL interpreters?  Were there official SLs?  Were the interpreters all
paid by the congress for interpretation, transportation, and lodging?

If we are to hire SL-to-SL interpreters, we'd have to come up with
multilateral and multimedia electronic wordlists of academic terms in
English and SLs concerned efficiently every time before a conference is
held.

--
Nobukatsu Minoura
Hamburg, Germany (till Aug. 2000)
Tokyo University of Foreign Studies