Hey, Mic, any tips for writing deaf/hoh characters? Would ASL be "translated" in a certain way in dialogue? Sorry if this isn't clear, but thanks for any tips you can give!
here’s a few posts that i’ve written about this:
how to write sign language
tips for writing deaf/hoh characters
(Not mine) If you’re writing a deaf/hoh character…
with sign language, and i know i said this in the first link, but i cannot make it clear enough that sign language needs to be treated like any other language. it has its own mannerism and everything, and it really doesn’t need any special indicator. it doesn’t need to be in brackets or italics or anything. just put it in quotation marks (or whatever you use for dialogue) and then the dialogue tag can indicated signing (”Hello!” He signed) also something instead of a dialogue tag I’ll describe how fast/slow movements are and stuff or facial expressions in place of it.
also with asl, just write it how you would any other dialogue. asl and other sign languages drops a lot of unnecessary words. a lot of spoken languages do this too. asl has a different grammatical structure, as well. if try to write asl as it is actually signed, it will sound terrible written. if your characters were speaking japanese and you were writing the fic in english, you wouldn’t use japanese grammatical structures for every piece of dialogue, would you? so there’s no reason to do it with asl.
that’s the general rule of thumb–it’s a language. treat it as you would any other language. if you feel there is a need to separate it for some reason or do something differently, you need to really, really ask yourself why. it’s very easy to indicate that someone is signing in narrative.
like i said above, though, i find it easy to focus on facial expressions and body language when writing characters signing. there’s no tone of voice, so it’s really fun to think of ways the characters are expressing themselves through their body language. in tol, i write hizashi as incredibly expressive and sort of ‘loud’ without being audible. it’s really interesting to play around with imo.
also research!!! deaf culture is a huge thing!!!! if youre writing a fic with a deaf character or someone hoh, heavy research into deaf culture is necessary!!!
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