[Jassy]

Greetings brethren!

Since ChaplainPaul had posted a thread about "Signing Bibles" - although it related to a different topic, this one has come up for me.

What do members here think about making the Word of God available to Deaf brethren? The difficulty and reality is that most Deaf people read at a third grade level. I am fortunate, having gone through most of my life able to hear and becoming deaf at an age after I had learned English grammar and speech.

I learned American Sign Language (ASL) and became a professor of it, qualified to teach it at university level, to train interpreters for the Deaf.

In thinking of making the Bible accessible to Deaf persons, how do we go about doing that? I believe the BEST solution is a KJV video Bible - making the KJV visible in Sign Language. That said, every country has its own signed language. Here is where it gets complex! Going word-by-word, carefully rendering each word into a sign is not the solution because it won't be understood by Deaf people. Native Deaf signers don't use the primary language in their country - they use the signed language that is native to their country. In the USA, that language is American Sign Language (ASL), which is the 3rd most-used language in the USA, after English & Spanish.

I would appreciate any commentary on this subject. I've seen ministers who are able to beautifully translate the MEANING of the KJV into ASL. However, I've also seen ministers who totally messed up the meaning by mistranslating.
What is the solution?

Sister Jassy