Tradurre la comunità sorda, non solo una questione linguistica

In the 1980s, the renewed interest of linguists in deafness and sign language revealed the emergence of a remarkable resilience within the Deaf community. Deaf people expressed the need to be recognized as social actors and possible precursors of a new way of seeing the world, which was the consequence of their unique, natural, visual-gestural language: sign language. This change in research and attitude resulted in a new way of looking at and understanding deafness, which could no longer be seen as a physical deficit to be treated medically. Consequently, sign language interpreters had to change their entire perspective on translation and shift from an approach that saw the interpreter as a helper working for the Deaf, to one that represented the interpreter as a bilingual professional bridging two cultures. This new perspective overturned the meaning of accessibility, which nowadays focuses on the cultural richness that the Deaf community can bring to society: the so-called Deaf Gain.

20世纪80年代，语言学家对失聪与手语的研究兴趣再度兴起，这一现象揭示出聋人社群（Deaf Community）内部展现出显著的抗逆力。聋人群体明确表达了自身作为社会行动者的身份认同诉求，以及作为全新世界观潜在先驱的诉求——这一诉求源于他们所拥有的独特、自然的视觉-手势语言：手语（Sign Language）。这一研究范式与社会态度的转变，催生了看待和理解失聪的全新视角：失聪不再被视为需通过医学手段矫治的生理缺陷。因此，手语译员不得不彻底转变对翻译工作的整体认知，从将译员视为服务于聋人群体的协助者，转变为将其视作搭建两种文化桥梁的双语专业人士。这一全新视角彻底重构了“无障碍（Accessibility）”的内涵，如今无障碍理念的核心已转向聋人社群可为社会贡献的文化丰度，也就是所谓的“聋人增益（Deaf Gain）”。