Editor for a new story with BSL or ASL experience

[Nellymcboatface]

I have a romance story centered on a deaf character.
I anticipate writing her with a mixture of lip-reading and signing.
My knowledge of the sentence structure of signing is poor as I am a real newbie to BSL signing.

My hope was to write the story and dialogue then work with an editor to get the signing sentence structure correct. WHich will hopefully show some of the difficulties in understanding between vocal & non-vocal communication.

Plus hopefully portray some humour, frustration & angst within the story to improve the romance.

Nelly

 

[Kumquatqueen]

BSL and ASL are very different but both have the usual features of sign languages: sign placement, speed,direction, size and shape are all important, so while they have what looks like a small vocabulary, the signs are very highly inflected to show varying shades of meaning - so glossing using simple words misses much of that.

The Linguistics of British Sign Language is a good book if interested in such things. Generally it's an object-subject-verb language - set your scene, place your subject noun/proform in it, subject does something.

Let me know how you get on with the story and I could take a look (PM me).