A visitor coming to Bible Gateway to look up John 3:16 has 63 options of English translations. For Christians, reading the same verse with an unfamiliar word or changed-up syntax—or in a more contemporary or lyrical version—can illuminate a biblical principle in a fresh way or strengthen the resonance of the passage.
Jost Zetzsche noticed this effect—but to an even stronger degree—when he began watching sign language translations. Zetzsche, a linguist, is the curator of United Bible Societies’ free Translation Insights & Perspectives (TIPs), an online tool that gathers insights from Bible translations in nearly 1,000 languages, including many sign languages. Zetzsche initially believed that adding these languages was just another part of his TIPs assignment.
“But as I began studying the recorded sign language translations,” he said, “I was astonished at how much I as a hearing person could learn from those languages that I had never experienced in others.”
He recently spoke with Ruth Anna Spooner, the lead translator on the American Sign Language Chronological Bible Translation team since 2019 and a trainer for Deaf-translation teams worldwide, to discuss the power of watching these sign language translations as a hearing person.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Zetzsche: Let’s start our conversation with one obvious difference between written and sign language translations. The more-than-400 officially recognized sign languages from around the world have several different strategies for dealing with proper names. Some sign languages fingerspell most names and translate some semantically or based on their meaning; others, like Libras (Brazilian Sign Language) translate all names with a meaning-based translation.
In the context of Bible translation, we recognize that names and their meanings are important in the original texts, but they typically lose their meaning in translation into written languages. When they are semantically translated into sign languages, though, they are often rendered not according to the names’ original meaning but by other meaning-based markers, and then often differently from one sign language community to another.
Can you help me understand this?
Spooner: Names are fascinating across languages. We are all familiar with how the same name might be pronounced and spelled differently from one language to another—John (English), Juan (Spanish), Giovanni (Italian), Jean (French), Johan (Dutch), Ivan (Russian), and so forth.
Deaf people give each person what is called a name sign—an invented sign that is uniquely identified with that person. When signing, instead of using the spoken language version of that person’s name (for example, John), the name sign is used to identify and talk about that person. Instead of fingerspelling “RUTH ANNA,” people will use my name sign, which is much more efficient and quicker.
In the Deaf community, a name sign is uniquely assigned to an individual by a Deaf person. Signs may be based on the individual’s appearance, personality, a favorite hobby, or related to the meaning of that individual’s name.
In American Sign Language (ASL) culture, people only get name signs if they are immersed in the Deaf community or if they are frequently discussed historical or contemporary figures (for example, William Shakespeare). Most biblical characters do not already have name signs, so Deaf translation teams often have to invent name signs based on scant data.
But let’s talk about David, whom we know a lot about. We know he was handsome, a man after God’s heart, a shepherd, a giant-slayer, a musician, a poet, a renowned warrior, a king, an adulterer, the father of Solomon. I have seen name signs for David based on the sign for king. Some name signs I’ve seen are based on his music and poetry skills. Other name signs reflect the young shepherd he was when we first meet him, or the giant-slayer he became. There is a lot of variation, and it all depends on what each team decides is the most memorable or most identifiable feature associated with David. What is most memorable or most identifiable might vary from culture to culture as well, depending on what traits are more valued in each country.
Sometimes when the verses explicitly mention what a name means—for example, Isaac means “laughter”—a sign language translation team might use that as a cue that their name sign should show some association with their sign for that meaning.
In our ASL translation, Jacob, who was hairless and smooth-skinned, has a name sign that can be back-translated literally to English as “smooth arm skin,” whereas his twin, Esau, who was notoriously hairy, has a name sign that indicates wooly arms. These name signs communicate more meaning to the audience than just the name of the person.
Zetzsche: The signed names of biblical characters are a way to learn more about them, but sign language seems to communicate even more deeply than that. Like most Christians, I want to understand the feelings of the biblical characters deeply and grasp what they were truly like even from this historical distance. While I realize that any translation is also an interpretation, I have been moved to see how Jesus emotes via the body of the signer.
One example of this is in the story of the Canaanite woman in Matthew 15 in Mexican Sign Language (Lengua de Señas Mexicana, or LSM). Unlike anything I’ve ever read in the written text, the LSM signer shows the depth of Jesus’ conviction, delight, and compassion in the face of the Canaanite woman’s reasoning. I can’t imagine reading that passage now without recalling that intense visualization.
Spooner: Anyone who sees a Deaf person signing will quickly notice that they are usually very expressive with their face and body, much more so than the average hearing person using a spoken language.
In fact, hearing people often feel that Deaf people are too expressive or excessively emotional. But what they don’t realize is how much grammatical work facial expressions are doing in sign languages. So much of sign language grammar is communicated in the face. Contrary to common belief, sign language is not just in the hands. It’s in the hands, and the body posture, and the face—all at once.
If you focus only on the hands, you will miss a ton of important grammatical information that’s happening via facial expressions. Eyebrows up or down (and how far up and how far down they go) can change a sentence into a question, or a question into a challenge, or a statement into a command, for example. The shape of the mouth and the cheek, lip movements, and even tongue movements all are an important part of sign language grammar, too. The position of the head and shifts in the shoulders from one side to the other also communicate a lot of important grammar and linguistic information.
Zetzsche: I had no idea! Yet when I look at the signer in the videos, it feels as if I’m also seeing a lot of emotion. Am I misinterpreting what I see?
Spooner: You are seeing emotion. That’s another layer of complexity. A lot of the facial expressions are serving grammatical functions, but on top of that, the signer is also manipulating the facial expressions to show emotions and, in the case of storytelling, to perform the personalities of various characters within the story.
In ASL, for example, a skilled signer can move their eyebrows and incline their head to form a question while at the same time using the eyebrows (as well as the rest of the face) to communicate the emotion behind the question. Is it an annoyed question? An angry question? An innocuous question? A desperate question? Thus, the eyebrows and the rest of the face are simultaneously communicating grammatical and emotional information.
In the videos on TIPs with their back-translations into written English, you are seeing the signers using their facial expressions to communicate grammar and emotion simultaneously. Facial expressions for emotion and for grammar are often intertwined in ways that make it difficult—even impossible—to separate out when signing. When asking a question, for example, the signer needs to know whether it’s an angry question or a genuinely curious question to sign it correctly. As you, Jost, don’t know a sign language, I imagine that to your eyes, what you see in the videos all looks emotive, which isn’t surprising. It’s wonderful to see that you feel the impact so deeply. But there is a whole other layer (the grammar) going on that you probably are not able to pick up on.
Now let’s discuss why the Matthew 15 story of Jesus with the Canaanite woman presents a lot of challenges for sign language translations. We can translate the words and sentences, but in sign language, because we must embody dialogues and perform them, it is quite impossible to do dialogue neutrally without showing the character’s tone and feelings in that moment.
So when Jesus said, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel,” what was his tone? Was he regretful? Was he firm? Was he kind of playful or teasing? Whatever his tone was, the woman felt she could still come and kneel in front of him, so what does that tell us about his tone? Not unlike stage actors, we translators must figure out, as best we can, what his feelings and tone were. (And then to make it more complicated, maybe Jesus used a different tone compared to what he was really feeling in that moment; if so, we need to show that.) There can be several different views on how a verse—especially with dialogue—ought to be performed.
And then Jesus says, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.” That is such a strange remark—and again, what was his tone? Was he being playful? Was he teasing, or testing, the woman? At what point did Jesus decide he would help her? Before he spoke about the lost sheep of Israel? Or after she knelt before him? Was Jesus initially reluctant to help but then touched by her faith and moved to help her based on that? Or did he know all along that he would help, and he was just doing the conversation for the benefit of the people around him?
Zetzsche: All of these are considerations when translating a text—or more precisely, the meaning of a text—into a written language, but it’s striking to see how much more urgent these questions of emotions are when translating into sign languages.
Spooner: Yes, you’re right—for translators, meaning is everything. Deaf translators know that because of the nuanced, performative nature of sign language, the signer showing too little or too much of an emotion can greatly change the meaning of a passage. So we need to make sure our facial expressions and body movements are showing not only the correct grammatical information but also the appropriate level of emotion that fits the situation.
Matthew doesn’t give us much of an indication of what Jesus’ tone or emotion was when he said these things. This is something we must infer based on scant clues in the passage. In most written translations I’ve seen, they can get away with keeping things at a pretty neutral tone and leave it up to the readers to make their own inferences and interpretations. Such neutrality is often not possible in sign language translations.
Zetzsche: I was also moved by the Russian Sign Language (RSL) version of the paralytic man who was lowered through the roof in Mark 2. In this signed translation, Jesus observes the efforts of the man’s friends from the moment they start digging through the roof. This makes a lot of sense, but it’s only implicitly present in the written text. As Jesus watches the paralyzed man being lowered in front of him, the signer shows that Jesus’ heart—and my heart in response—is overflowing with compassion. The eventual joy of the healed man and the crowd is portrayed in an infectious way that is hard to imagine in written language.
(Watch the video with an English translation.)
Spooner: Yes, seeing something in sign language is often much more poignant than reading words on a page. While I do love reading in English, there is something about seeing the verses in ASL that just makes it hit you in a whole different way.
Maybe it is partly because of the decisions that the signer must make related to conveying attitude and emotion. We are able to see the signer become the characters, which makes them living and breathing in a more tangible and three-dimensional way than merely reading the words on a page. The performance of the signer becomes almost like a movie. We are seeing it before our eyes, not just visualizing it in our heads. So it makes us notice things that we might ordinarily not think about or skim over when we read in a written language.
My team and I are all bilingual in written English and ASL. Several months ago, we worked on some Old Testament passages related to the fall of Judah and the destruction of the Jerusalem temple. We’d read and analyzed these verses before and talked about how to translate them.
But when we filmed it and had the person signing it, we were all taken aback by how truly disgusting the Israelites’ behavior was towards God. No wonder he was so angry with them. Just seeing the Israelites’ actions come to life in the signer’s performance made it more repulsive and heartbreaking. When we got to the part with the actual destruction of the temple, it was like a punch in the gut for us. We felt the grief of that loss and exile more than we had ever felt when reading English translations.
Sign language translation, even though it communicates the same content and the same meaning as written language translation, brings out layers of the verses that are not usually as noticeable in written language translations. New and different things jump out at you and hit you differently.
Seeing how sign language translations impacted you surprised me. Sometimes I have in my head that people who don’t know sign languages won’t really understand what they’re seeing. But your observations have made me realize that if a hearing non-signer takes the time to study a sign language translation—not merely glance over the videos but study them like you have—then they, too, can see the verses in a new, deeper way and gain fresh insights. You don’t need to know a sign language to be moved by the translation.
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