Les premières recherches portant sur la poésie signée sont relativement récentes et s’attachent à classifier les œuvres et à observer les effets stylistiques produits par les poètes. Nous tenterons de dépasser ces questions pour essayer de comprendre ce que la poésie signée, et la traduction de ces œuvres, nous dit des langues signées en général. Les recherches linguistiques peinent encore à délimiter la part verbale, non-verbale et para-verbale dans l’expression des signeurs. La tâche se révèle encore plus ardue face à la performance poétique signée, qui dépasse largement les frontières du texte. Dès lors, comment comprendre le travail des traducteurs ? Comment opèrent-ils ? Comment passer d’un texte à une forme signée et vice-versa ? Les travaux de poètes, d’interprètes et de traducteurs éclaireront notre réflexion et nous amèneront à questionner la forme même de la poésie signée en tant que performance scénique.
Recent studies on poetry in signed languages focus on the classification of literary material and the identification of stylistic features used by poets. Here, our aim is to go further and try to understand what signed poetry and its translation reveal about signed languages. Translation raises an issue of inter-cultural barriers. As Newmark (1981) said, translation is part of intellectual life of every civilized people. The community of the Deaf is not an exception. The translations are imported into and exported from its cultural territory. Poetry, this cultural material, leads us to examine the question of translation with the perspective of a text’s transition from one culture to another. Studies in linguistics of sign language face a problem for setting boundaries between verbal, non-verbal and gestural components of a signer’s expression. What can be designated as a “text”, in a signed language? In terms of narratives, it is not easy to answer this question. But it is even more complex in the performance poetry in signed language, where verbal, corporal, spatial, facial expression are very closely coupled. The process of translation of poetry between French and French sign language forces us to consider a double process: on the one hand, from one language and culture into another, and on the other hand, from oral to written style and vice versa. What do translators actually do? Who are the translators? Different methods and ways of translating between French and FSL poems have been experimented: a deaf poet who translates by himself because he has bilingual and bicultural abilities; an outside source who translates with no connection to the poet; the pairing of a deaf poet and a hearing sign language interpreter; or a cross functional translation team composed by deaf and hearing poets, and deaf and hearing translators. These translation proceedings give the opportunity to consider the sense of the word “interpreter” in French. Professional sign language interpreters are well placed to be part of such a translating team. Their professional abilities consist of switching from one language into another. But in French, the word “interpreter” has different meanings. It is also equivalent to “performer”. Is the interpreter the only performer of his or her work? In other words, do translated poems have an independent existence? Also, is it possible to consider a signed poem independently from its author? Can we consider video recording as a written form? Finally, how can one share a signed poem with the public? Our presentation is based, on one hand, on the experience of two deaf poets, who both compose poems in FSL and are involved in different translation proceedings: Levent Beskardes and François Brajou; and, on the other hand, on the experience of French/FSL interpreters who are particularly interested and involved in the translation of signed poetry. Together, they will participate in a workshop preparing a poetry festival (Voix Vives, held in the city of Sete, France). During this festival, poems and their translations are performed live. This allows us to examine the relations between signed poetry and stage performance.
