Wahawafe - a multilingual translation project

Tue Aug 9 14:27:12 UTC 2011

As I suppose the sentence is something you could use if you were to meet extraterrestrials, I have chosen to use the exclusive but extensive 'we', and the Norwegian SL-sentence would translitterate something like 'humans we yes, live Earth we yes', where the 'we' is 'all of us here, but not you'. I am not a 'native' signer, and cannot guarantee that this would be the best way of putting it in Norwegian SL, but I think it would do. The sign-text is a screen dump. as I always have problems with the SignText in combination with e-mail

Ingvild 
Roald, Norway

> Date: Sun, 31 Jul 2011 22:28:57 +0530
> From: nik.azn at GMAIL.COM
> Subject: Re: Wahawafe - a multilingual translation project
> To: SW-L at LISTSERV.VALENCIACOLLEGE.EDU
> 
> Hi! I don't claim that my sentence will not cause any problem in
> translation. I accept that languages are really different from one
> another to come up with an easily translatable and meaningful
> sentence. However, this sentence can be satisfactorily rendered in
> most languages, at least spoken ones. I don't have much idea of sign
> language grammars.
> You should use the version of "we", which includes the maximum number
> of people. If there is a difference between inclusive and exclusive
> "we", then use the inclusive one. Both the we's refer to the same
> group of people. If it's not possible to say the whole thing in one
> sentence, you can break this into two, by dropping the "and".
> Nikhil.
> 
> On 31/07/2011, Trevor Jenkins <bslwannabe at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Sat, Jul 30, 2011 at 1:22 PM, Valerie Sutton
> > <sutton at signwriting.org>wrote:
> >
> > Nikhil needs the translations in written SIGN LANGUAGES, not spoken
> >> languages!
> >
> >
> >> I am not an ASL expert, or I would do the translation myself in ASL. I
> >> actually do not how to sign that phrase in ASL, so that is why I was
> >> waiting
> >> for someone who knows ASL to do the translation for NIkhil in
> >> ASL...written
> >> in SignWriting.
> >>
> >
> > I'm in a similar situation with BSL. I'm increasing fluent in its use but
> > not a native speaker. However, I am fluent in English yet I don't know how
> > to understand the phrase:
> >
> >
> >> "We are humans and we are from Earth."
> >>
> >
> > How many are the "we"s? English, plus I guess many (all?) of the spoken
> > languages given here as exemplars, the first person plural is uncountable.
> > It would be possible to translate it into Swedish with "vi" and still
> > obscure the number of participants. In BSL, at least, the first person
> > plural is countable; up to four maybe five even 10. It is signed differently
> > depending on the number of participants. For example, if "we" consists of me
> > and my wife then I sign that slightly different from me, my wife, and you
> > (Valerie), plus the physical proximity of the "we" one to another would
> > change the sign(s) needed. However these small groups are signed entirely
> > differently from "we" as the subscribers to this list (if all of us happened
> > to be assembled in one locale).
> >
> > The presence of the "and" indicates that the second "we" is a distinct
> > different group from the first but with the speaker (signer) a member of
> > both groups. There is a famous phrase that exemplifies the same problem
> > "Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path." In this case the
> > AND is a transliteration from the source language but its inclusion creates
> > an ambiguity that is not in the original. If that second "we" of the sample
> > sentence were to refer to me, my wife and my dog then the "and" is vital.
> >
> > There's also a BSL issue here. We have no sign for AND. There are ways to
> > indicate that two things are connected but not immediately.
> >
> > The "from" affects the translational choices too. Where is this discourse
> > dislocated sentence being transacted and how did the various "we"s arrive
> > there, or were "we" there from the beginning. Similarly the actors to whom
> > this phrase is being relayed are they from somewhere else coming to the
> > "here" or were they there from the beginning. This information will change
> > how the sentence can be translated.
> >
> > It's not that the sentence is un-translatable *per se* but that rather it is
> > not context free as Nikhil claimed somewhere (possibly on his web site). At
> > least for BSL, context is required otherwise the processing costs in the
> > sense of Relevance Theory is astronomically high. Without the enclosing
> > context it isn't really possible to provide a BSL translation.
> >
> > Regards, Trevor.
> >
> > <>< Re: deemed!
> >
> 
> 
> -- 
> निखिल सिन्हा | Nikhil Sinha
> nik.azn at gmail.com
> www.wahawafe.zxq.net - Wahawafe - a multilingual translation project.
> "We are humans and we are from Earth." in several languages.
> 

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