Sign Interpreting

British Sign Language (BSL) is the language used by Deaf people in the UK.

It is a language of the hands, body and face and it uses space in order to convey meaning. It is a highly visual language and it has developed over many hundreds of years to meet the needs of Deaf people when they interact with each other.

It has a completely different structure to English – that is, the grammar is different and the way the signs are constructed is different.

Although sign languages are more similar to each other than spoken languages, each one has its own vocabulary and expression. Sign languages (like spoken languages) grew up to meet the requirements of the culture and so Chinese Sign Language is very different in concepts and individual signs to British Sign Language. It is possible to say that the grammars of the different sign languages are similar but the vocabularies are quite different.

To find a sign interpreter, please check with the following organisations:

http://www.rid.org (US Association)

http://www.nrcpd.org.uk/page.php?content=59 (British Association)

http://www.ens.it (Italian Association)