Okay, so this article, Hear No Evil, by Sara Minogue, was posted in the online magazine This, in the May-Jun 2005 issue, so it is definitely old news. I still think it poses a lot of interesting questions for interpreters.
Here is the opener:
Deaf since childhood, Bobby Suwarak grew up in isolation, able to understand no known language. Now charged with a crime, he has presented Nunavut’s court system with a problem. But the form of charades he uses to communicate is being used by deaf Inuit across the territory, leading one researcher to call for the court to recognize it too
Ignoring the very troublesome use of the word “charades” to refer to home-signs (which is a whole discussion in itself and surely burns a lot of people up) there is a lot in this article worth discussing, i.e. how to deal with a situation like this professionally and whether in this particular situation, the interpreters should all learn Inuit Sign Language, or should just try to teach everyone ASL. But while trying to address the question of whether to start teaching ASL in this part of Canada, the author makes a huge blunder! (Notice my emphasis below.)
[McDougall] urged the Government of Nunavut to create a court interpreter training program in ISL with the goal of producing impartial legal interpreters for deaf Inuit. But that never happened.
A reasonable person might ask: Does it even matter? In 2000, MacDougall estimated that there were 155 deaf people in Nunavut, of whom approximately 30 percent—perhaps 47 people—are untrained in ASL. A simpler, and cheaper, solution would be to train these people to use ASL. But how? By sending them to cities in southern Canada? Many Inuit still associate the South with medical emergencies and residential schools. Furthermore, ASL is based on the English language, and the dominant language in Nunavut is Inuktitut. In many small communities, 90 percent of people speak Inuktitut as a first language, and many speak limited English. Learning ASL would not only require deaf Inuit to first learn English, using it would effectively cut them off from their communities.
What!? Don’t you just want to smack this author? How can a person write an article about sign language without doing at least a bit of research on the subject. Where are the fact checkers?
Of course we all know that ASL in fact came from LSF (langue des signes française), not BSL. But aside from that, sign languages are not based on spoken or written languages in the first place. It is ludicrous to think that Inuit people would first have to learn English before they could learn ASL. Am I wrong? Yes, there is a continuum between more English based signing (PSE and all that) and ASL because the Deaf people in America are often bi-lingual and interact with English speakers on a daily basis. This is a modification of pure ASL due to language contact, but the language itself is in no way, shape, or form related to English. The bottom line is that ASL could be translated and taught people of any native language without teaching them English first.
And finally, it is just plain irresponsible for a magazine to print fallacious material about a language that a communitty of people must constantly fight to defend. Media of the world, Deaf issues are controversial, do your homework before you write about them!
