Sign languages evolve just like any other language
The daily update from our national leaders and top health officials has been a feature of the COVID-19 pandemic. We’re now so accustomed to seeing an Auslan interpreter at these pressers it seems strange to think that it wasn’t so long ago that their presence was an exception rather than the norm.
Unlike snap lockdowns and home learning, hopefully this trend of translating important press conferences will continue beyond the pandemic. These communications professionals play a vital role in disseminating information to an audience who might otherwise be excluded.
Their work has also provided one of my lockdown highlights – watching the gestures and facial expressions of the interpreter as the NSW Police Commissioner recounted the incident of the 2 naked sunbathers who became lost in the bush after being startled by a deer.
Auslan, first recognised as an official language by the Australian Government back in 1991, is used by almost 20,000 people on a daily basis, according to National Disability Practitioners, a peak body for the disability workforce. As with any other language, it constantly evolves in response to cultural events, and there has been no bigger event of late than COVID-19.
In an interview with The Sydney Morning Herald newspaper, Mandy Dolejsi explained how she and other Auslan interpreters adopted a sign developed in the Deaf community overseas for COVID-19 that mimicked the crown of spikes now so familiar from those electron microscope images:
“Because it was daily, they were seeing it on the television. It just took off … That’s how the language changes ... it’s used by deaf people, it gets out there and then as an interpreter you watch that and you take on that new language.”
I find it interesting that Auslan, like English, borrows from other languages. Perhaps even more interesting is the fact that Auslan also has regional variations (or ‘dialects’). According to The Deaf Society, a specialist service provider, Auslan has its roots in British and Irish sign languages, but has evolved to be its own language with a rich variety of concepts, its own syntax and subtle regional differences.
