[Wikipedia-l] Re: Sample ASL/English entry

[Gerard Meijssen]

Timwi wrote:

> Kelly Martin wrote:
>
>>
>> Then it sounds to me like ASL is not yet mature enough, as a language,
>> to merit a Wikipedia of its own.  If ASL signers are not willing to
>> accept synthetic signing, then I suggest that they need to adjust
>> their attitudes (or else improve the quality of sign synthesis
>> software).
>
>
> Interestingly, though, English speakers are usually not willing to 
> accept synthetic speech when they can have real speech from a real 
> human...
>
>> It's not practical to record hundreds of thousands of
>> videos to facilitate access for a relatively small community.
>
>
> ... and yet, the [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia]] aims to 
> record hundreds of thousands of audio files to facilitate access for a 
> relatively small community (the blind).
>
> Personally I think videos of ASL translations of Wikipedia articles 
> should just be a WikiProject like Spoken Wikipedia. Just like our 
> sound files, the video files would be a translation of a particular 
> revision. When the file becomes out of date due to heavy editing of 
> the article, re-recording should be considered, but since we haven't 
> got very far yet, we are concentrating on recording new articles first.

When we decide to experiment and have a Wikipedia project in signed 
languages, it will be a seperate wiki. It does not have to slavely 
follow what a particular project has done because that would imply that 
a signed language is considered less important than the written 
language. The community of those that sign have a culture that is to a 
large extend seperate from the spoken culture.

When people decide to sign articles that exist in a current project, it 
means they either "finger" the text or they have to translate the text. 
With fingering the sign language is not done justice, with translating 
they should have the room to do a proper translation. A proper 
translation does imply that the text is not literally translated but 
that it is rephrased to make use of the best idiom giving the context of 
the text.

It is also expected and respectable to have new articles that do not 
exist in the written wikipedias. This only reflects the difference of 
the culture and the signifcance given to other subjects.

Thanks,
    GerardM