"SPOKEN 'TIPS' AND THE SELECTIVE TRANSLATION OF POETRY IN SIGN LANGUAGE"

Abstract

This research investigates selective translation (Spooner et al, 2018) in the bilingual context of a signed language and a spoken language, in which the translator provides voiced contextual clues to the audience. There are increasing numbers of bilingual poetic productions presented simultaneously in these two modalities, in Brazil and elsewhere. These have been studied from a literary perspective as duets (Pedroni, 2021; Sutton-Spence, Pedroni, 2023; Melo Neto, 2023) and from a translation perspective as artistic performances that involve the processes of translation and interpretation (Lucena, 2017, Albres, Klamt and Sutton-Spence, 2023). We selected a poetic duet in ASL and English by Peter Cook and Kenny Lerner “4 Arms/Snowstorm” to understand how selective translation is carried out, taking a critical translation approach to analyze the translation strategies. We identified five principal selective translation strategies: i. translating literally (a sign or an expression); ii. not translating and letting the audience see the signing; iii. giving a partial translation, either by giving a hint of the referent, but not of the action that it performs or by giving a hint of the action but not of the referent that performs the action; iv. translating something that was not signed; v. translating following the aesthetics of the poem. Thus, we propose that literary translators can follow these selective strategies so that the audience can make an effort to understand the signing and see the poem in the artists’ bodies.

Keywords: Sign language literature; bilingual-bimodal duets; poetry translation; selective translation.