Monday, March 5, 2018

She's not there, Soph showing ASL

Terrible technical audio but excellent personal signing. Soph1951 is a top interpreter on YouTube. Her signs hit the mark, she is transliterating with no gloss. Her signs are the closest there are to textbook signs.

However, she does add an "anyway" where none is sung. Right smack in the middle.  "Though they all knew" is signed "anyway, they (don't) know."

"Anyway" is both open hands as flippers flapping back and forth with the fingertips whacking each other. It looks wishy-washy.

"Know" is fingertips to your forehead a bit off to the side." "Not know" is that same motion then flipped down hard as if knowing is discarded. Soph flips it down so I see "not know."

"soft and clear"

"Soft" is squeezing two cotton balls in front of your chest. "Cool" is fanning your face at your cheeks. They're similar hand configurations with different movements. Soph moves up her cotton balls to her face so her switch from "soft" to "cool" doesn't cover any distance. That is her style choice. She raises both hands a single inch to differentiate the two signs. So it looks like one long sign of four hand flaps near her face.

First, "She's not there" to Soph's right. Then "she's not there" to Soph's left. It's the same "she" and the same "there" but in different places, switched mid song. Another style choice. If it were real conversation and not a song in need of variation, then you'd risk conveying two people in two different places.

"There" means "over there." Not "intellectually emotionally present."

The kind of "not present" or "the lights are on but no one is at home" is shown similarly, "this right here, top to bottom" or "You, sitting right here, head to toe." It's the same movement as "me right here, " and the same  "there" open hand configuration with different movements and different senses,  an open hand jab over there, or an open hand top to bottom, right here.

Apart from these observations you will not see anything with greater fidelity to the actual lyrics in English. You can easily identify the song without sound because Soph's signs are so precise. Soph is true to English lyrics and to the beat and the attitude of the song, to all of her songs, actually.

1 comment:

edutcher said...

She looks like Jane Fonda.

Poor woman.