on Subtitles

This is a kind of continuation of my last post.  Working at the Cleveland International Film Festival has been a wonderful experience every year.  This year has been made even better by the fact I have learned enough sign language to be able to communication with many of our deaf patrons.  The practice has given me incredible highs (when I'm able to communicate), and terrible lows (when a deaf teenager completely befuddled me).

A group of deaf students from Max Hayes High School came in again yesterday morning for the "Film Slam" event, where high schoolers get a chance to see a collection of short film subjects.  After the students were all seated, I went into the theater to see some of the shorts.  A couple of the films were filmed in a way that no words needed to be spoken, nor any closed captioning (subtitles) required in order to understand the film’s action and intent.  A few of the selections from other countries required closed captioning.  These two devices were perfect for the deaf students.  However, nearly half of the films included in the collection, although splendid in their own right, were completely reliant on aural communication in order to be understood.  During these films the students simply had to sit and watch the characters roam around the screen meaninglessly.  A few scant times it was possible to read the character’s lips, but impossible the majority of the time, and of course, completely ridiculous when it came to animated characters.  The students still had a terrific time overall, but their experience could have been heightened tremendously.

After the movies had ended I approached one of the teachers and apologized for the lack of subtitles.  I told her that perhaps next year we could put together a collection of films that all had subtitles.  I also suggested next time she take them to one of the other collections since we offer French and Spanish short programs.  At first she said this would be incredible, but then she said "these children are learning ASL and subtitles are typically in English, which can be difficult".

This was the main reason I had difficulty communicating with one of the teenagers; he was using strict ASL, while I was using the "common language" of the deaf community called PSE (Pigeon Signed English).  ASL (American Sign Language) uses a different word order from English while PSE follows English word order.  For example, in PSE you could say "I went to the store", while in ASL you would say "Store, I go to finish".  There are some other rules, like adding rhetorical questions to some sentences and so on.  This is the main difference between common subtitles and actual closed captioning for the deaf too.  Much "CC" occurs in ASL form.

However, I don't understand how the kids read books since they are not written in that order.

Running concurrently with the Cleveland International Film Festival is the RIT Deaf Film Festival in Rochester, New York.  Many Northeast Ohio deaf residents travel to this festival in order to see films which feature sign, are interpreted by signers, or are closed captioned.  A large number of the films feature deaf actors or are about deaf subjects.  The CIFF does not need to compete with this festival by specifically targeting deaf subject matter.  However, local area deaf students rarely have the resources to travel to New York in order to take part in a film festival.

More later.