I know this is slightly off topic (are we ever on topic?! what is our topic?!), but I think American Sign Language (ASL) is one of the most beautiful and artistic languages. The internet, and particularly YouTube, has an active Deaf community and I always feel ecstatic when I find videos that not only have great ASL or ASL translations (not just Signed English) but that are also high quality or well-produced.

Here are some of my favorite videos that include music and ASL. I think you will find them beautiful and interesting even if you don’t know any ASL. (Yes, there is some discussion about the irony of how much hearing signers seem to enjoy translating music into ASL.) (If you don’t know anything about ASL, check out some fun facts at the end of this post.)

(1) Sia’s music video for Soon We’ll Be Found is not only unique and creative (glow in the dark sequence! painted hands!), but also is a very cool and very loose, interpretive ASL translation of her lyrics.

Lots more after the jump!…

(2) D-PAN (Deaf Performing Artist’s Network) has created awesome translations of contemporary songs, including Beautiful and Waiting on the World to Change, but their best work comes in the form of a music video that looks exactly (except for the signing!) like Fort Minor’s real video for the song Where’d You Go. You can watch it here on the D-PAN web-site.

(3) This Russian group sings Grease in English and signs along in ASL (not always the lyrics, exactly, but the emotions at least).

(4) I think this is a pretty cool rendition of the ipod commercial featuring a shadow and ASL, though it would be a kind of bad irony to actually use ASL in a commercial for a product that Deaf people can’t really enjoy.

(5) What I’ve gathered from the comments section is that the performers of this song, All I Want, are a couple — the male half signing, the female signing. The female, Rosa Lee, also has a one-woman Deaf show. In the beginning of the video, when you see the words, Rosa Lee signs the lyrics in SEE (Signed Exact English). After that, she goes into ASL and signs her own version of the lyrics (which are not a translation of the actual lyrics). I think it’s cool (and a good way for non-signers to see a bit of the difference between SEE and ASL) and pretty professionally well done.

(6) This is the same Sia song, Soon We’ll Be Found, but this version is from David Letterman. It’s a unique performance that speaks back to the music video.

(7) Another movie I would embed, if it were allowed, is Marlee Matlin on Sesame Street with Billy Joel (and Oscar the Grouch!). Marlee Matlin won an academy award for her role in Children of a Lesser God (here is an excerpt of a great, ASL-filled scene!), was recently on Dancing with the Stars, and (not nec a highlight of her career…) had her own Mac ad.

If your still interested, feel free to check out my personal ASL playlist with more great song translations and whatnots.

A few random ASL facts:

  1. A lot of people confuse SEE (Signed Exact English) with ASL, but ASL has its own grammatical structure which is markedly different from English. ASL is more visual.
  2. Deaf people tend to think hearing signers are the equivalent of “monotone” because they are not expressive enough. Facial expressions are also part of the grammar in ASL.
  3. ASL is not a universal language. In fact, FSL (French Sign Language) is more similar to ASL than ESL (English Sign Language)!
  4. “Deaf” is capitalized when speaking about the Deaf community because it has its own culture (and they are proud of being Deaf). There is a university for the Deaf in Washington DC called Gallaudet.
  5. TRAIN-GO-SORRY is my favorite idiom in ASL. It has a meaning similar to English’s “You missed the boat.”
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