The World of HARRY POTTER: ASL Deconstruction Series Book Edition
By popular demand, we are sharing a series of videos showcasing invented name signs for characters, terminology, and place names within the wizarding world of Harry Potter.
A few peers and I came together to brainstorm the signs after holding countless discussions regarding the books and the films. During those deep, thought-provoking discussions (click here for an example of one) we soon saw the frustration of finger spelling every other word in our idea exchanges and soon added our own invented name signs. Those signs caught on and were soon used by the interpreting and captioning team at our university.
***Do keep in mind that those suggested signs are not the "final" version nor are they set in stone, but rather the result of our brainstorming and discussion sessions. We are sharing the videos to kickstart an intellectual discussion of possible signs for those names/items/terms mentioned. Do feel free to share yours and/or offer suggestions for alternate signs.***
Here's the informercial that we made to accompany the 16 videos and 150+ signs:
A note to non-signers and readers: the videos are all closed-captioned. Simply toggle the "CC" button on the bottom to turn on the captions. If one prefers, a text-only document is available upon request in both PDF and Word formats, showing the approximation sign gloss descriptions.
Video Set 1: The Dream Team
*Note: There is a difference when discussion the world of Harry Potter, and discussing the specific character of Harry himself. When referring to Harry himself, the character's name sign of tracing the lighting bolt would be used, while references to the world - ie the books, the films, the park, etc - would be used with the H-P in the individuals's preferred signed language.*
Video Set 2: The Hogwarts Staff
Video Set 3: The Houses of Hogwarts
Video Set 4: The Students
Video Set 5: Hogwarts Subjects
Video Set 6: Quidditch, Quidditch and Quidditch!
Video Set 7: You-Know-Who and Death Eaters
Video Set 8: The Order of the Phoenix
Video Set 9: Wizarding Caste System
Video Set 10: Creatures and Non-Human Beings
Video Set 11: Hogwarts Ghosts
Video Set 12: Places in the Wizarding World
Video Set 13: Wizarding Terms & Things
Video Set 14: Horcruxes and Hallows
Video Set 15: Wizarding Transportation
*Be careful using the sign for Apparate or Disapparate as the clueless interpreter might voice it as teleport, a term used by the Star Trek fan community. I have had this happen to me when I used the term in everyday conversation and not a Potter-centric discussion.*
Video Set 16: Wizards and Muggles
Now that we've finally put together a list of the signs we have come up with, there are some names and terms that still need suggestions which can be found below. By all means, do discuss away and we would love any suggestions on how to improve the user-friendliness of those name signs.
Miscellaneous Characters In Need of a Name Sign:
Barty Crouch Jr., Gregorovitch, Igor Karkaroff, Madame Malkin, Madam Rosmerta, Olympe Maxime, Grawp, Cornelius Fudge, Pius Thicknesse, Rufus Scrimegour, Honeydukes, Zonko's, Three Broomsticks,
There are many more characters, items, and creatures in the books and films - we have chosen to focus on the recurring ones for now. If you do have a suggestion for any of these above, or any that has not been mentioned, please do share with us! Anything is up for discussion - that is the purpose of the deconstruction series - to deconstruct, to discuss, and to discourse. An analysis documenting the creative process will be released in future blog posts so do stay tuned for those!
Update: Read the rationale behind those name signs in this post: HARRY POTTER Signs: Behind the Creative Process. Click here to read it!
***A request - if one would like to respond by video instead of a text-based comment, please do ensure that the video is either closed-captioned (there are many free programs online to do so) and/or have a transcript available. This is to ensure that we have equal access to discussion.***
The purpose of this blog post is for educational purposes to develop language and cultural interaction between the books (and films) and the Deaf community; and for ease of communication access when discussing said books and films.
Love love love this! We are a family of 7 (mix of Deaf and hearing) and are huge HP fans. We're headed to WWoHP this fall, so have been re-reading and watching movies. My 8 year-old asks me the name signs for all of the characters. (I interpret portions of the movie as he watches it.) I'm clueless and tend to run out of ideas beyond Harry! Thanks for all of your hard work on this. :)
ReplyDeleteI am a hearing student learning ASL in hopes of becoming an ASL interpreter. I found this a few days ago and was thoroughly thrilled! I have had so much trouble fingerspelling all the terms and names in Harry Potter to my deaf friends and, while some of them know what I'm talking about, some of them have never read the books or watched the movies. So to see this and be able to rely on it is such a blessing! Thank you so so much for the hard work you put into making a cohesive, understandable collection of terms in the Wizarding World!
ReplyDeleteI feel like crouch Jr could be the sign for mask reversed (hand fully covering face, moving away like the removal of a mask), but with a continuous pinky wiggle ( like his tounge-flick thing)
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