language

While listening to the lecture on the deaf community I was reminded of the section in The Amistad when the lawyer broke a promise and tried to convince the translator to tell the prisoners that he “should” have done something else. Frustrated the translator screamed “there is no word for should, either you do something or you don’t do it,” that line struck me. I realized that what a society values comes out in that societies language. While Jean Blackburn talked about the deaf community I realized one of the underlining theme of their language is sharing.
The story that Jean shared about the man talking to her at church. He told her that his wife started drinking slim fast. She lost twenty pounds, and now she is wearing a beautiful dress. Then he told Jean that she should drink slim fast. On face value this sounds like an insult, but as Jean explained he was complementing his wife, and saying how slim fast made him happy. If it made him happy why would it not make Jean happy too. In direct translation that idea got lost. It is important to not only understand the translation, but the values behind a language.
The direct translation of the word Proud is pretty harsh, but when a parent says “I am proud of you,” it is a deep complement. I wonder if the love in saying “I am proud of you,“ gets lost a translation? While all of these thoughts were turning in my head I realized that people want to convey a message, and the deaf use sign language. Simply knowing this hand signal and that hand signal is not understanding the ‘language’ a translator has to understand the message too. I was very impressed with Jean Blackburn, and her ability to understand sign language.