An individual A is reading an English text and expressing it in
ASL. Another person B, conversant in ASL, who can see A - but not the
text - writes down in English what A is expressing in ASL. How different
will the resulting text be from the original text read by A?

If I understand things correctly, this would in essence be
equivalent to translating from a spoken language L1 to a different spoken
language L2, and then back to L1. This will in general result in
differences between the original and final versions. How significant can
the differences be expected to be when L1 is English and L2 is ASL, when
compared with the same exercise using English and, say, German? What
about English and Russian?

On Thursday, May 27, 2021 at 8:31:57 PM UTC-4, Jean F. Martinelle wrote:

> An individual A is reading an English text and expressing it in
> ASL. Another person B, conversant in ASL, who can see A - but not the
> text - writes down in English what A is expressing in ASL. How different
> will the resulting text be from the original text read by A?
>
> If I understand things correctly, this would in essence be
> equivalent to translating from a spoken language L1 to a different spoken
> language L2, and then back to L1. This will in general result in
> differences between the original and final versions. How significant can
> the differences be expected to be when L1 is English and L2 is ASL, when
> compared with the same exercise using English and, say, German? What
> about English and Russian?

This may be relevant. At the 2019 Linguistic Society of America meeting
I attended a talk by a hearing linguist who spoke in ASL while her talk was
simultaneously interpreted for the hearing audience. Afterward I asked her
whether it wasn't distracting to hear her words come back to her a few
seconds later -- she said she simply tuned out the sound coming from
the loudspeakers.

Compare the experence of being "shadowed" -- whereby as you speak,
your words are repeated back to you (either by a recording delayed a
few seconds, or by someone repeating what you say): it's highly dusruotuve
o the speaking process. Compare also a speaker being simultaneously
interpreted in a languyage they know well. There would likely be a similar
effect.

As for the question -- why wouldn't a retranslation involving a signed
and a spoken language be any different from a retranslation between
spoken languages?

There's a complication. With ASL, unfamiliar words or names are
communicated with fingerspelling using English. Presumably other
signed languages have similar pacts with spoken languages. Americans
need to learn to read in the foreign language, English, and there may well
be interference in their signing from this second language.