Translation

The project included the translation of corpus texts from Austrian Sign Language into German to ensure the can be approached bilingually. This translation process involved the definition of specific aims and awarness of challenges which influence the outcome of the translation process.

This Homepage is also made accessible written and signed to reflect on the Deaf and hearing project team.

Aims

Sign Language Translation in a linguistic project

• Among other things this project aims to benefit from the collaboration of linguists and translation scientist whose different competences and various approaches are meant to be combined and to complement each other.
• This project is exceptional since Austrian Sign Language is the source language for analyzing and translating sign language, which means that the structure of Austrian Sign Language was analyzed without “following” the syntax of the German language. This process can also be seen in the translational work since the signed texts have many different versions of translations. By means of the specific linguistic analyses the translators try to identify characteristics of the sign language. These characteristic might indicate that for example when translating into the German written language one needs to write a subordinate clause. Because of analyses one can presume that certain signed texts need to be translated by writing a subordinate clause because of the forward and backward movement of the upper body of the signer.
• Another aim of this project is to analyze to what extend detailed linguistic analyses/annotations of a signed utterance are of help for translating.
• The translational work is also enhanced by the team, which consists of Deaf and hearing colleagues. The exchange between Deaf and hearing colleagues enhances the translational work since it allows to integrate a wide range of different perceptions of language and to think of more translations.

 

Findings and challenges

When translating translators work with the whole video (and not only with parts of it). By using their feeling for language and by taking into account the target culture and the purpose of the target text (and many more components) translators have to convert the video into the target text to the best of their belief. Therefore, in order to be able to produce a sensible translation when translating from Austrian Sign Language into written German a mere annotation of linguistic units is not of great help for the translator. Thus, it is only partly possible to draw conclusions whether a certain structure in sign language requires a certain linguistic structure in the German written language. (For example, it is a false conclusion to assume that raised eyebrows are always indicating a question.) Nevertheless, if the translator is confronted with questionable parts of the source text or with sequences which are hard to understand, the possibility of having access to the analyses and having a decision guide is of help. This option of using the linguistic analyses is of assistance when it comes to making comprehensible decision when choosing a version of a translation.

 

Homepage translation

When translating the homepage the translators acted up to the same principle, which aimed at using the sign language as source language for translating into the German and English written language. This procedure was chosen because when translating from German into sign language one is tempted to use a similar structure of the German language in sign language when signing the videos. It was placed importance on preventing that from happening. Therefore, the team shared the information about the content of the signed text by communicating in sign language and agreed on the content. Afterwards, the videos were filmed and the next step was to translate the videos into the German respectively into the English written text.