Gally Valli ABC Story and Haiku Translation

• Using Haiku for ABC Stories in ASL • This video demonstrates a cultural equivalence strategy pioneered by Brian Cerney, Assistant Professor of ASL-English Interpreting at Keuka College. ABC stories restrict ASL production to fit a stringent pattern. Likewise Haiku also has a specific and restrained format. These two poetic forms complement each other and are a natural strategy for ASL-English Interpreters faced with the challenge of voicing an ASL ABC or Number story. The pattern of Haiku is 17 syllables structured in three lines of 5, 7 and 5 syllables each. Haiku emphasizes present tense and emphasizes imagery (both are excellent matches for ASL poetic forms). A standard ABC story of 26 signs can generally be expressed with either two or three haikus, depending on the complexity of the themes within the poem. This ABC story was created by Clayton Valli and his ASL students in the Spring of 1992 at Gallaudet University. Brian Cerney was one of those students and used to tell this story to his Deaf children. Oddly, they somehow attached the "can of food" to olives and to this day they have a mortal fear of olives and their potential to cause an alien to burst forth from their stomaches. He apologizes for scarring them for life (regarding olives, anyway) but still treasures the ABC Story. In 2012 the play at the Rochester School for the Deaf, "Deaf O' Grease," (directed by Vicki Nordquist) was creatively filled with ABC stories as replacements for many of the songs in the original musical. This was the impetus for searching for a way to do justice to the poetic performances other than the uninspired approach of "A - knock on door, B - open door" etc. Haiku seemed to provide a solution. In the Spring of 2014 Keuka College Interpreting students were presented with four ABC stories from the play. They found that generally two haikus were sufficient to express each of the poetic pieces and that the haikus allowed a parallel level of creativity. This video is the initial offering of how to use Haiku to capture the creativity of ABC stories. In this case three English haikus were required to express the complexity of the original ASL. Post your ABC stories matched with English Haiku and let us know about your own work! Keuka College offers a Bachelor of Science degree in ASL-English Interpreting and a Bachelor of Arts degree in ASL. Explore the language and culture of the Deaf on the shores of Lake Keuka in the beautiful Fingerlakes of New York State. www.keuka.edu