THE VIEW from IC

Non-Manual Signals and

Mouth Morphemes in ASL

April 2023 - Issue #30

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1. From our catalogue:  Interpretation Skills: English to ASL, Second Edition by Marty Taylor, PhD and Companion DVD Ants
2. Non-Manual Signals in ASL: An excerpt from Interpretation Skills: English to ASL, Second Edition (English)
3. Chad Shumaker demonstrates several uses of NMS in ASL (ASL)
4. Mouth Morphemes in ASL:  An excerpt from Interpretation Skills: English to ASL, Second Edition (English)
5. Patrick Fischer demonstrates the importance of mouth morphemes in ASL (ASL)
6. CDHY (Center for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Youth) STEM Academy PNW:  Paul Glaser shares a summer opportunity for youths (ASL and English)
7. Out There - Deaf Owned:  PAH! Restaurant in Portland, Oregon (ASL with English subtitles and English)
8. The IC Book Club:  Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton, NYT #1 bestselling author (Graphic memoir in English)
9. Michael Halischak:  ASL Idiom: EYE-SHUT (ASL and English)

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- From our catalogue -

Interpretation Skills: English to ASL
2nd Edition & Companion DVD

Book and dvd cover for Interpretation Skills: English to ASL Second Edition book and Interpretation Skills: English to ASL Companion DVD - Ants against a light blue background with the words in white lettering - buy both and save $10!

English-ASL interpreting students, educators and practitioners will find Interpretation Skills: English to American Sign Language by Marty M. Taylor, PhD, useful and informative. The book answers the complex question, “What skills are required to interpret effectively from English to ASL?”

The Companion DVD-Ants features a Deaf and hearing team with the preparation, interpretation, and debriefing of their work interpreting a 15-minute English lecture. It also includes 3 additional certified hearing interpreters, and more than 150 short clips from all of the interpretations, categorized for discussion of skills from the book.

The original video material for the Companion DVD-Ants was created by Dr. Brenda Nicodemus for her doctoral research, Prosodic Markers and Utterance Boundaries in American Sign Language Interpretation (Gallaudet University Press, 2009).

Find out more and order this special offer here.

Non-Manual Signals in ASL

In her book Interpretation Skills: English to ASL 2nd Edition, Marty M. Taylor, PhD, outlines how important it is for interpreters to choose non-manual signals that agree with their lexical choices.

Key Skill 3.1: Use ASL Lexicon (vocabulary) accurately (Pages 85-90).

Description of the skill. Using ASL lexicon accurately is fundamental to conveying, and ultimately interpreting, the precise meaning and intent of the speaking participant’s utterances, and it requires significant breadth and depth of knowledge of both ASL and English.

Lexical items include words and signs, parts of words and signs, phrases and idioms, and discourses containing specific meaning within the context in which they are used. Every ASL lexical item chosen by the interpreter (e.g., sign, fingerspelled word, non-manual signal, use of space) must be semantically accurate, carrying the same meaning and intention in the ASL target message as that expressed in the English source message.

In addition to making appropriate lexical choices, the interpreter’s use of non-manual signals must agree with her lexical choices. Many times, the signing of specific lexical items is accompanied by non-manual signals which are grammatical signals. For example, when interpreting a message about someone who is very thin, the interpreter may sign THIN, accompanied by a non-manual signal such as ‘pursed lips’ to provide the additional meaning of “very.” When interpreting a message about someone who lives “a great distance away,” the interpreter may use the ‘eye squint’ non-manual signal with the sign FAR to convey the meaning of “far away.”

Read the full post for Key Skill 3.1 on our blog.

Chad Shumaker demonstrates several uses of NMS in ASL.

Posted on his YouTube channel in February 2016: @chadshumaker568.

Mouth Morphemes in ASL

Marty M. Taylor, PhD describes mouth morphemes in Key Skill 5.6: Use accurate non-manual signals when structuring space.

Read the full post on IC's blog .

Patrick Fischer demonstrates the importance
of mouth morphemes in ASL.

For more information, check out his website: https://www.deafpatrickfischer.com/

This video was posted on YouTube in June 2017.

CDHY partners with NTID

to offer a three-week

STEM Academy in the PNW

CDHY is partnering with NTID to offer a STEM Academy in the Pacific Northwest at WSD, Washington School for the Deaf.

This program, July 16 - August 4, 2023, is for deaf, blind and hard-of-hearing individuals in Alaska, Washington, Oregon and Idaho.

Interested? Check out this website for more information:
https://www.cdhy.wa.gov/events/

- Out There -

Opened in June 2022 in Portland, Oregon, Pah! aims to bring together Deaf culture with the hearing world. It offers classic American pub food, all served with a housemade secret sauce. All of their menu items are named after slang words in ASL. Check out their website, eatpah.com.

Two men in black PAH! Restaurant caps and t-shirts in a restaurant kitchen. The man on the left is taller than the man on the right and has dark brown hair with a moustache and beard. The shorter man on the right is clean shaven. He is signing and has a happy facial expression.

Pah! owners Victor Covarrubios and Lillouie Barrios explaining the concept
of their restaurant. Source: Oregon Public Broadcasting

"Pah!" means "finally!" in American Sign Language. For Deaf owner Lillouie Barrios, after experiencing a lot of work discrimination over the years, it is exciting to own a restaurant that operates solely in ASL. Although his husband and co-owner Victor Covarrubios is hearing, they want their restaurant to be a learning experience. Customers without ASL can use a microphone that converts speech to text on an iPad, or they can write on the counter.

Read this Oregon Public Broadcasting article from November 2022, for more about the restaurant and its owners.
https://www.opb.org/article/2022/11/23/pah-portland-oregon-restaurant-deaf-queer-latinx-asl/

The View from IC is interested in featuring Canadian and American businesses and organizations owned/created/operated by Deaf or hard of hearing persons. Recommendations? Let us know.

Or, if you are involved in one of these businesses or organizations and would appreciate some FREE promotion in Out There in a future issue, fill out our form here. Kat will be in touch!

*** The IC Book Club ***

Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands

2023 Canada Reads Winner

Book cover for DUCKS: Two Years in the Oil Sands by New York Times #1 Bestselling Author Kate Beaton. DUCKS is written in large yellow font and is superimposed over a drawing of a female worker in safety vest climbing up the ladder of a huge oil sands industrial hauler. In the background is a pond or lake with a steep hill coming down to it.

Since 2002, CBC has hosted Canada Reads - a nationwide debate broadcast on television and radio - where five contenders champion their book choice to declare an ultimate winner. This year the challenge was to select one book that all Canadians should read to shift their perspective. The 2023 books and their champions were:

And the winner - on March 30 - Day 4 - was Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands, a graphic memoir by Kate Beaton, published by Drawn & Quarterly.

Ducks was on many "Best of ..." and "Notable" book lists in 2022 including Barack Obama's Favorites and a New York Times Notable Book.

From Drawn & Quarterly's website:

Before there was Kate Beaton, New York Times bestselling cartoonist of Hark! A Vagrant, there was Katie Beaton of the Cape Breton Beatons, specifically Mabou, a tight-knit seaside community where the lobster is as abundant as beaches, fiddles, and Gaelic folk songs. With the singular goal of paying off her student loans, Katie heads out west to take advantage of Alberta’s oil rush—part of the long tradition of East Coasters who seek gainful employment elsewhere when they can’t find it in the homeland they love so much. Katie encounters the harsh reality of life in the oil sands, where trauma is an everyday occurrence yet is never discussed... [more here]

"In a deeply beautiful way, Ducks offers a nuanced perspective on a place and industry that fuels much of Canada but that many of us know very little about. However, it also goes beyond that, presenting a deeply moving picture of humanity in general: lonely, disillusioned and, ultimately, redemptively compassionate."—Globe and Mail Top 100

Michael Halischak

asl_m.i.t

(Metaphors, Idioms and Translation)

Michael Halischak, native signer and fourth generation Deaf, has been teaching ASL and Linguistics for 20 years.

Click on the picture to watch his video on Instagram.

Do you notice his use of NMS and Mouth Morphemes? What specific ones did you catch?

A man with short dark but greying hair is signing with an angry expression on his face against a black background. He is wearing a short-sleeved collared golf shirt. The words "A person and I have carried out a casual conversation that has become a heated debate" are to the left of the man, in white lettering.

ASL Idiom: EYE-SHUT.

Follow him on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/asl_m.i.t/

View all Hand Twisters/Fun Facts signed by Mary Harman, and English Oddities signed by Angela Petrone Stratiy at The View From IC Blog.

Interpreting Consolidated (IC) publishes resources for ASL and interpreting students, interpreters, educators and mentors in the US and Canada.

Questions? Have an idea for a resource you'd like to see? Just want to say hello? Get in touch with Kat Vickers, Marketing and Distribution Manager. Or just reply to this email! The address will look weird, but it will get to us.

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