The Sound of Sunshine, ASL

No, don't go, watchmysign. Come back. Come back.

You should watch this lad because he's brilliant.

UMG controls the song and they insist it be viewed on YouTube. It's worth opening another window by B-clicking here.

I do not know why this song is chosen to translate. I hadn't heard it before. But now that I heard it four times it seems to be running on its own. I was not looking for it. The song was way down the list of results while looking for something else. YouTube did not have what I wanted so it graciously provided alternatives that became further remote from my interest as I pursued it. I proceeded aimlessly choosing things to view, I kept picking women and I kept noticing that women are doing the same thing throughout, and becoming a bit cross with the whole thing. They are interpreting their songs, conveying the gist of the chorus, so there's that, then dropping the chorus in favor of bouncing around and club dancing which is entertaining to watch, yes, someone having a good time, yes, but sadly conveys the idea only partially and quite fragmented.

A previous video of this same song I noticed the producing organization first and thought, well, it's some kind of song that an organization will select, some cheerful inclusive praise to people type thing. It looked like the organization that is putting out videos of people who grew up with deaf parents translating songs, so I watched and the woman did what the other women are all doing, a partial job of translating, not sticking with the lyrics as written throughout, with all the rest amounting to basically an audition video that includes, club dancing, attention to hair and to wardrobe, wind machine, makeup, scene and setup, posing, flirting, smooching, smiling gorgeously, as example, the video shot in puddles of water around industrial site flicking water all around with her foot for the song "Radioactive," as in Dirty Dancing and with very little emphasis on accurate signing. Then this lad, watchmysign, does the same song viewed previously that I hadn't heard of and now I'm really wondering what's up with this song.

The first woman, for contrast, if you like. You'll see what I mean immediately.

Watchmysign is very good.

I just want to squeeze his guts out.

His style is very much like my own, he reminds me of myself, and that is why he intrigued me. And that made me wonder why watchmysign didn't work out something more graphic for the song's key phrases, "I'm waiting for this storm to pass" and "that's the sound of sunshine coming down."

Watchmysign does impressively well, just short of graphic linked imagery. 

The hand configuration for "waiting" (in the song) is the the same hand configuration and movement for "fire" and also the same hand configuration for "storm" (in the song) except one hand is flipped so the hands are facing, to contain a storm. "Waiting for this storm to pass" is a very smooth phrase from one concept (waiting)  to the other (storm passing), one hand simply flips from the sign for "waiting" then both hands shift position for a storm passing by, although positioned wrongly for a textbook storm, not up there above the head, but rather as a person passes by. 

I do this sign "waiting" slightly differently than shown to distinguish it from fire. My waiting is dramatic. I throw out both arms rigidly parallel with loose hands wiggling my fingers, slowly or rapidly, the stance and the facial expression, eye rolling, watch tapping, weight shifting, say exactly what kind of waiting and how long and how trying on my patience. 

But this looks like "fire." If I looked up his version of "fire" the flames would be higher and more roiling. 

Storm, a sign that is shown lifted above the head with hands and arms covering the face. We don't like those two things about a sign, but it does has the advantage of passing by within it, so the action verb phrase "passing by" is built into the sign for "storm." 

Storm needn't be up there at the top of the head. This is the textbook example. Because our sign for "storm" is coming from the word for "waiting" and because we don't like words that make us lift our arms that high and expose our sweaty armpits and worse cover our face and hide our lips, it's fine to bring down the storm to body level as long as a good clear storm is shown. 

But it is not fine to bring down the sun, another sign lifted above the head. People execute this sign in different ways. It looks like a lightbulb. Some signers do a little circular squiggle then boink splay fingers for the rays of sun, as a lightbulb. I do the sun as full hand "C," same as shown here, rising stately into its celestial position way up there except with no rays of light as this example and as watchmysign in the song video. For "moon" the same thing with a "C" formed with a single finger and thumb, basically a lower case "c" for moon.

You see the sign for "sun"  is a pain in the butt to display. He lifts his sun right off the screen, turns it around and illuminates the whole world. 

He starts with a broad "C" as a visor, at the eyebrow. He had to pull his arm up there to begin the sign for "sun" and then take the C twice as high. It's a drag to perform this sign all the time. The thing is, if you are going to evoke the nearest star you must lift your whole arm up over your head as far as it will go, no half hearted effort acceptable, no tucking the elbows into one's ribs, no meek sun allowed, or its not a sun. If the word is in the chorus of a song you will be doing a lot of arm stretching, and since the "shine" is "coming" from that up there, then there will be some activity from that direction, rays that are streaming, pouring, flashing, shining, you set the sun in the sky, now the light is coming on you, and this is the sound. It is a phrase that looks like circular movement between the sun in the sky, its rays come to you, and the sound up to your ears. That phrase can be acted as a graphic circular motion and presented as chorus. 

Sun and moon as broad and narrow "C" involve one hand lifted high the other arm idle.  The idle arm can be put to use to show a horizon, so any phrase involving rising and setting of sun or moon can be depicted using both hands, one for horizon the other for a moving celestial body.

Textbook shine. The example is showing shine coming off something. Our shine is not coming off the back of our hand, rather, it is coming off the sun that we placed well in the sky, and our shine for this song is coming to us, not flying off in space, so, shown backward from this. Our shine begins from the sun rays we just finished depicting by showing the sign for "sun." 

Our shine is coming from the sun we placed way up there. Our sign for "come" will be altered from this to conform with our altered "shine", to show quite clearly that we're saying, "sun" "shine"  "comes."

I want to use the sign "come" because it is so odd in this context. The song is odd and I want to be odd too. The "shine" is already coming. The concept of "come" is inherent in the sign for "shine. " Just as movement is inherent in the sign for "storm" so too movement is inherent in the sign for "shine," when we preform "shine" emanating from the sun to us the verb "come" is already part it, but there is no harm in having "shine" become "come" before it gets to you. The sign can start out "shine" and finish "come" then both hands, index fingers extended, flip and slide right into the sign for  "down" to comport with music, sound, lyric and beat.

The oddness of the phrase "and that's the sound of sunshine coming down" might be the reason why this song is chosen for translation. I do not know. Maybe it's a popular song I missed. Sunshine does not have a sound. Maybe that's the thing that makes it interesting to them. Thinking of this graphically one must connect "sound" a finger to the ear or a cupped ear, to rays of sunlight "coming" down. It's an odd phrase, not "streaming down," not "pouring down," not "beating down," not "pin-lighting," not, "flooding," not "raining down," not particularly warming you up nor illuminating you, nor filling you, merely coming down.

Watchmysign does very well with the phrase. It looks to me somewhat Islamic the way watchmysign fills up with heavenly light, it's lovely, and it is the actual sign for Islam. I like it. I would do this differently though, to link signs and be more graphic.

We see the lightbulb form of "sun" already provides the rays of light the same way Akhenaten had his artists depict life-giving rays emanating from Aten. The signer could show those rays "shining" and adjust the word "come" to fit the direction of the rays that were just shown, the hands and arms being prepositioned so the phrase displays like a movie one concept connected to the next. I wonder why watchmysign didn't work out a visual phrase, something simple and graphic that runs in conceptual sequence smoothly using the systems of sign, one so pure and so graphic that would make sense to non-signers.