Lingua Franca

Learning two languages has been a challenge and one fraught with usual faux pas. In Hindi if you don’t roll your R enough in Kurta (shirt) it sounds like kutta (dog) and everyone giggles. I mostly use Hindi for auto drivers and vegetable shopping so I find that it hasn’t developed as much as I’d have liked though at times I sound quite good.

The other language I’ve been learning is Indian Sign Language (ISL) and it is one of the languages of my work here. In the UK we use British Sign Language (BSL) and I’m fluent. It’s a common myth that there is a universal sign language. Pretty much every country has its own sign language due to communities developing their own just like spoken languages developed. Sign Languages have been researched by linguists as early as the 1960s and proven to be full languages in their own right. As many different sign languages have similar grammatical features once you learn the vocabulary of another sign language it can become much simpler.

But there are still complications. As one of my first encounters with ISL was an international sign linguistics conference in Delhi I met many Deaf people from around the country. Trying to learn a new sign language is a bit difficult when you’re meeting people using five different dialects of ISL from as far apart as Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata. Also some Deaf people prefer using the American finger spelling system. In Delhi they mostly use an alphabet similar to the British system. Finger spelling is used for spelling anything that doesn’t have a sign or does but you just don’t know it! It’s more complicated than that but I won’t go into that here. I find it gets interesting when people fingerspell Hindi words to me. Luckily these tend to be about food so I’ve obviously learnt all those words.

It was really hard at first trying to remember to stick to very visual elements of the language and to pick up the Indian signs along the way. Sometimes I have to work hard to decode the language if I don’t know what the subject is. Once I know the context it’s much easier and I just get it. I find myself wishing I could just sit around the office chatting to the Deaf staff and students but it’s a mix of Deaf, hearing interpreters and sadly, laptop time as work must be done.

The hardest things to learn are the real cultural signs that have been adopted into ISL. Many of these are slight head nods or certain movements of the hands. Some of these signs are used by hearing people on the street gesturing to each other that something isn’t possible or when they are agreeing to something. But it’s great when it all fits in and I love it when I sign in ISL without coding from the BSL first.

And just like Hindi I’ve had a faux pas in ISL. In my first month I asked a Deaf member of staff what the sign for toilet was. I spelt it out and asked for the sign. I wondered if it was appropriate but thought that’s an important sign to learn and I really wanted to find one at the time. He held out his first two fingers palm facing upwards and pulled them back. Not many people use toilet paper here which is why eating with your left hand is taboo. So in my naivety and surprise I thought the sign was a graphic description of what Indian people do in the bathroom. Anyway a month or so later whilst chatting with staff over lunch about travel arrangements I realised what the man thought I had spelt: ticket.     

Here’s some info is you want to know more about Sign Languages:

World Federation of the Deaf – Factsheet on Sign Language

Learn Indian Sign Language

UCL Mini-lecture: The truth about sign language

UCL Video - A visual people and a visual language

 

Pics:

Hindi Alphabet from Google Sites

International Women's Day from The Deaf Way Foundation

Video Killed the Radio Star

Not content with my own You Tube channel: www.youtube.com/jenpenwen

I've got in on VSO-UK's. See the clip of a few volunteers talking about why we love it and why you should volunteer too: www.youtube.com/user/vsomediauk#p/a/u/0/lkCBX8lhTFk

Another clip on my channel to come soon: Staff leaving lunch in the office. I'm subtitling in three languages again so it always takes a while.

The Heat is on...

I didn’t think it could get much worse: 47 degrees, trying to stay indoors anytime between 10 and 6, going for a run only after 6.30pm and drinking 6-8 litres of water a day. Reports say it’ll go up to 50 next week. Every time it goes up a couple of degrees I’m not sure how I’ll cope but then I just do. It just gets less enjoyable.

I’m pretty bored of drinking water and I’ve been know on some days to drink up to 10 litres. If you have some alcohol it has to be weighed up against how much water you can drink in the time left in the day. I had two beers the other day and got a dehydration headache. I pretty much stop at a few beers these days.

Today I found it hard to concentrate at work. If the water coolers don’t work in the office the sweat immediately starts. These are contraptions that suck in water from the tap, sprinkle it onto squares of hay at the sides with a big fan in the middle that blows out the water-cooled air. Air con would be nice but it’s too expensive. Someone in the office took pity on me one day and put a fan on my desk. The staff think it’s hilarious and call it my personal AC. It can be a life saver though. If it gets really bad I splash water on my face and sit there with it on the hurricane setting. I don't get big wind-blown 80’s rock video hair though, it's usually stuck to my neck. Make up you can also forget. I don’t think they sell it in sweat-proof.

Keeping up with yoga is fine providing you can summon the energy to get back out of the flat once you’re home. Swimming is ok between the hours of 7 and 9am only. Any later and the hoards of kids appear and sun burn is a strong possibility. I tried the local running track last Saturday at 8am. It must have been over 35 degrees already so it was more of a run with walking water breaks. My companion and I are aiming for 7am this Saturday. I don’t think I can do any earlier.

But here’s the thing. Does this all mean when it gets to 50 I’ll end up house-bound? Not wanting to venture out into the oven-like breeze I might end up planted in front of the AC that I splashed out on. My savings have never been spent on anything better. It used to make my room a freezing 22. Now on max it’s about 30 and my fan is whirring away. Dilliwallahs talk of escaping to the Himilayas in June. A local friend tells me to get up at 5am every day. I might have to take this advice next week. If it gets bad you might see me doing the monsoon rain dance on the terrace at 5am every morning. You never know, it could become a local attraction.

Indian Interpreter Idol: The Search is on

Someone recently made a comment about my blog that it was personal and not about work. It is true. There have only been a few references to work and I wrote about our national conference.

Thing is, it’s pretty difficult to write about everything I’m doing. Just like in offices around the world there is a lot of background work but the glamorous big events don’t happen that often. (And the occasional paint throwing at Holi.) If I waxed lyrical about a meeting I had or a simple email I received I’m pretty sure people would stop reading.

I recently gave a presentation about social media to other volunteers. This was more to do with my enthusiasm for YouTube and Twitter than any specific form of expertise. Something I mentioned was to be careful what you blog about. Your neighbours or the people you work with may be reading. If you’re not getting on with someone, you definitely shouldn’t be making it public.

I also think that a blog perhaps isn’t always the right medium for what I'm doing. Occasional tweets can be seen about how work is progressing but I mostly don’t want to go into all the details now. What I can say is what I am working on is pretty big. There are only 100 known interpreters in India for what estimates have guessed are 4 million Indian Sign Language (ISL) users. A number that is less than my previous estimates due to generations of Deaf children having little access to ISL in their education and many rural Deaf people being isolated from the rest of the signing community. There is hope that education for Deaf children will improve but this will take time. There is hope that India’s laws will change. This will also inevitably take time. There are other projects my NGO works on. My work is on increasing knowledge of interpreters in society, supporting interpreters and finding potential new ones. The talent is out there. It is like Indian (Interpreter) Idol at the moment in our office as we hunt them down.

What I will say specifically, is I am six months in. It is the half way point. After one month’s training followed by five months in placement, I get it. VSO says it takes time to build those all important relationships, to understand the context in which you are working and to be apply your knowledge to the work. It feels like all the prep has been done and we really are cooking on gas. To get everything done in the next 6 months is going to be pretty hairy. We need support, there is a lot of work to be done and it is not as easy as this would be at home. I’m really positive. We have a good team, excellent vision from the Director and everyone I work with is enthusiastic and gets it too.    

Forgive me if I blog more about life than about work. It’s not all yoga, swimming and travelling. I just don’t want to give the game away. How much better is it going to be to report on the success afterwards?

If you want to know more have a look at the Facebook page and join the group to receive updates. We are also on the web here. And if you want to enter Indian Interpreter Idol and haven't done so yet please contact us.

It's The Final Countdown

On my way to the doctors last Friday I was unceremoniously dumped out of my auto at the bottom of Sansad Marg. I didn’t know this at the time but a demonstration was taking place and the road was blocked. I looked up and I was outside the office of the organising committee of the Commonwealth Games. A big notice board stated there were 156 days left until The Games start.

It’s a hot topic in the news as Delhi seems to be mostly under construction. I see the extension works of the Metro by Kailash Colony on my way to work every day. Not sure it will actually be complete by October. As I went over the flyover last week I could see the reconstruction of the Jawaharlal Nehru stadium. They are just putting up the little tent-like roof sections on the outside (see pics from Treehugger). Who knows what the progress is on the internal sections? It’s a controversial building too. Recently in an imported UK copy of Grazia just a few pages away from the Haute Couture 'Travellers pants' selling for £650 there was an article on child labour at the Commonwealth Games sites in Delhi. Oh the irony. The working conditions are terrible but actually the children aren’t employed, they come with their parents' from afar to work and live on the building sites. There is no child care and the pictures show them helping their parents. The journo (if you could call her that) had completely missed the wider issues of poverty, labour violations and the problems faced by migrant workers who travel far for employment.

There were two announcements in the Times of India on Saturday concerning completion times of works. Firstly the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) who are responsible for the maintenance of parks and roads have stated they will complete all works by the end of the this month. Secondly, Chief Minister of Delhi, Sheila Dikshit (an unfortunate sounding name where I come from), has stated that all works must be completed by June in case the monsoons come early.

153 days left now. I can’t wait to see what Delhi will look like come October. With 100,000 visitors due to arrive it will be hopefully a lot less messy than now. Now does anyone know how I can get my ticket to see Usain Bolt?