■ Guessing culture and verbalizing culture

The National Rehabilitation Center for Persons with Disabilities College where I work is a six-storied building. The rooms of the Sign Language Interpretation Course are on the fifth floor. There is a copying machine under the management of the administrative office in storage room (alias copying room) on the fifth floor.

When the electric lights of the copying room burnt out, I asked my colleague Mr. I to have them replaced with new ones. He told me that I should only ask a staff member in the office on the first floor because the staff member then would request the section in charge to do so.

I used to ask Mr. I to call the staff member of the office before e-mail became wide spread. But now, I can ask the staff member directly by e-mail. Having written the mail and reread it, I started to wonder if what I came up with was all right. So I showed it Mr. I. The result was what I expected.

First sentence I wrote was as follows.
-------------------
Because two electric lights of the storage room (copying room) burnt out, would you please request the section in charge to replace them?
-------------------
After I rewrote it with Mr. I’s advice, my second sentence was as follows.
-------------------
Because two electric lights of the storage room (copying room) burnt out, please see to it.
-------------------
If I signed the second sentence to a Deaf person in JSL, he/she may respond “So what?”
In JSL, we verbalize the request in full (as in the first sentence), but in Japanese, not all words are expressed. In short, it looks more natural to leave certain things unsaid in Japanese and let the reader fill in the gap…

Indeed students of the Sign Language Interpretation Course talk to each other in JSL, but they don’t seem to express things fully. Without expressing everything, they expect me to guess what they mean. Is this the first language interference of their native tongue Japanese…..?

The other day, I told a student in charge of our e-mailing list to set up an emergency e-mailing list to send messages in one go in case of an emergency and be responsible for the e-mail addresses. Then, the student started to say to me “The usual e-mailing list too……” in JSL, but didn’t finish. Somehow my head was switched to the Japanese mode then and I guessed that the student wanted to say “Must I be in charge of the usual e-mailing list too?” Before I knew it, I signed “So what?” in JSL. The student hurriedly explained to me that she only wanted to confirm if she needed to take care of the usual e-mailing list as well.

On a different occasion, we found errors in a document and we needed to rewrite it. The senior staff member went downstairs before we confirmed who was to replace the document.

Negotiation, of a sort. This time I tried calling the office via sign language interpreter. My position was, I would like the staff member to do it, but if I had to, I would. I signed to the interpreter “With regard to the errors in the document, should I make the replacement document or would you?” But the interpreter said to him something like, “Do I make it or will you make it?”

My colleague Mr. I heard this conversation and said to me “Oh, that expression sounded as if you demanded the staff member to make the replacement document.” In Japanese, I should have left it at “With regard to the errors in the document, the replacement should be…….”

It seems that hearing people think JSL has only straightforward expressions. I suggest that hearing people understand that there are reserved expressions in JSL as well. But, as in this case, when we need tactics, the way we use our reserved JSL reflects the way JSL verbalizes things.

* Translated from the e-magazine of April 10, 2006 (# 72)