Be Still

@wohdaily Summer Event  ➝ Day 14 (Regrets)

It’s fortunate I’m not in love with you yet —

A nice summary of the problems with speech-only language approaches for deaf kids and how they came to be in the first place. Excerpt: 

Basically, parents are often told that they have to choose between speaking or sign language for their children. Since most people in the U.S. don’t sign, many opt for focusing solely on spoken language, enrolling their children into speech therapy and audiological training. About 80% of children born deaf in the developed world will get a cochlear implant later on, but the problem is that their brains may not be equipped to understand the complex notion of language by the time that happens.

“Cochlear implants create an electronic symbol, not the ability to hear,” Hall said. “So they miss that first year of life and exposure to language anyway, and [when they get a cochlear implant], kids don’t have any language foundation to help them decode these electronic signals.”

How can a child learn the ABCs in kindergarten if, by age 5, they’ve never really been conceptually introduced to the idea of words and their meaning? Language deprivation has reverberating effects on relationships, education, independence — plus critical skills like memory organization, literacy and mathematics. As one 2012 paper put it, “the brain of a newborn is designed for early acquisition of language.”

“I’ve worked with many students who are language-deprived. Often, they show up to school with only two or three words in their vocabulary,” April Bottoms, a graduate student at Boston University’s Education of the Deaf program, said through an interpreter. “Can they learn how to write, read and get the foundations of education? No. I have to connect with them through shared gazing.” […]

The logical solution appears to be teaching children sign language, even in tandem with more popular, speech-based methods. But somehow, teaching ASL to every deaf child is still at the center of a century-old debate.

Something that my ASL classes were constantly taught–by a woman who was Hard of Hearing and came from two generations of Deaf family members–was people who are taught ASL and then taught the oral method learn the oral method A) MUCH FASTER and B) are far more proficient in the oral method.

Contrary to what TV and movies will have you believe, lip reading is really freaking hard and most D/deaf people can’t do it and if they can, even fewer do it well.

Before the Clarke School for the Deaf (now the Clarke School for Hearing and Speech) made its mark in deaf American education in the 1860s, there was a popular support of manualism.[6] Manual language soon became a less popular choice for deaf education due to the new Darwinist perspective 

Phoneme Chart, by TheEndisNearUS.

Take a look at the first two columns, with the phonetic symbols for human speech, along with how those sounds are spelled in English. Then take a look at the second two columns, with photos and drawings of human mouth shapes as they make those sounds.

Absolutely nowhere in that chart is a single sound made by a unique mouth / lip shape. At minimum, there are two different sounds, and some have as many as six.

Word of Honor Daily Summer Event: Wen Kexing (1/31)

Because someone might as well!? And look at this. Look. At. This.

Does this look right to you??

These are just the last three fics I wrote. I appreciate the likes, believe me I do, but you have to understand. Likes do nothing for content creators. It’s the reblogs. Because that’s how you find shit on your dashboard. Through reblogs. Not likes. This isn’t twitter or tiktok or instagram. This is a website that’s run by the reblog system.

Reblogging helps content creators put their stuff out there. Why do you think so many people stopped writing fanfic and creating beautiful fanart and edits? It’s because they put in hours of work and don’t get nearly enough notes for their masterpieces. Yes we do this because we enjoy it but like...some validation won’t hurt. A boost of confidence here and there might be all someone needs to finish whatever thing they started and left.

REBLOG YOUR OWN WORK.

blueberry //

June’s patreon stickerclub design! ◇ shop ◇ patreon ◇ twitter ◇

SO…

1. Yes, MXTX IS getting money from this set of publications!

2. ALL translators across all three books are fan translators that have been hired to do the job properly. This does include Suika and Pengie for TGCF and others for MDZS and SVSSS - So for all of you who shitted on fan translators, fan translators are making it happen for yall right now

3. ALL of them will be uncensored

4. Yes, there’ll be hard and soft copies! I KNOW that the EN copies are definitely way more expensive than those who can read Chinese and buy Chinese original versions are used to but there’ll be soft copies which should be cheaper - And hey if you want freebies and all that stuff, you can still buy the cheaper Chinese copies hahahaha

5. Any fan translations of these three books are NOW illegal basically, for real, since there are official ones coming up - I do feel sorry for proper actual respectful fan translators who were taking on MDZS and SVSSS who were doing re-translations and now have to stop etc.

6. SevenSeas will decide whether or not to do further translations of other popular danmeis based on this pre-order so do support if you can

7. Suika found SevenSeas to publish at least TGCF from what I can see from her tweets, so she made it work. With plenty of help of course, but she really, really made it work, even while people were hating on her during the entire translations and buying drama. Now you really can support so no more excuses!

8. What I said about there being no impetus for EN translations: This wouldn’t have been possible if Suika and other translators didn’t push hard for this, and if SevenSeas wasn’t willing to listen to the fan translators, and also give MXTX a proper cut of the profits. What I’m saying is that EN-speaking fandom now, in an economic sense, SHOULD be profitable for authors to want to have their books licensed in EN, and have proper and great translators we’ve seen doing proper work. I’m happy to be wrong definitely, if more EN official translations pop up from SevenSeas, but like I said, this was a concerted effort based on mutual respect on all parties, and we don’t get that very often, so now’s the time to support.

9. And am I ever so glad to say that once again MTL etc. really cannot compare to actual, proper translations, and I’m so happy for Suika and the other translators that they’re now ACTUAL translators and wannabe “I learnt Chinese for 6 months or 1 year and now will translate this terribly difficult novel because I am Smart” and everyone who’s given them trouble can now really shut up, because Suika really made it happen (along with many others yes!). She be all action and talk, I love that

10. Will there still be problems? YES, I think there will be. Despite everything going on official right now, we can all probably agree that troublemakers in the EN-speaking or international fandoms still exist. There’ll always be issues. Especially with new people joining in on the fun now that these super viral and hot titles are available in English, yes we can expect a lot more stupid questions and stupid people coming up. I don’t deny that overall it’s a huge thing, but as always, fandom is fandom, and with new entrants coming in? We definitely have a hell of a ride on our hands

11. Should you take the EN translations as honest gospel and it being THE one translation? I mean not in the sense of publishing or creating fan translations but if any people who speak CN and EN have different takes on translations in terms of expression I’d say those are equally valid and correct. I expect people might go “oh but the official translation version” blah blah but… language is nuanced. Although these translators for the books are the best there are out there, language can still be interpreted or expressed differently in translations! So yep, don’t go accusing smaller translators or content creators for “wrong translations” especially when they speak and lived Chinese all their lives thanks

12. The purest form of the content is still the Chinese version - I’m not being a wet blanket here, but the most, most original form of it is definitely the Chinese version, and things ARE still lost in translation regardless, so personally I of course still prefer the CN versions for all

13. Will novels like 2ha and SPL get official translations? I’d say it might be a bit hard for 2ha because there’re already so many haters in the EN-only speaking fandom for all the “immoral” stuff so yeah. SPL maybe? I honestly think Priest is not that interested in having EN translations for her books tbh unless the money is really boomz, so that one is up there for anyone’s guess as well.