As the COVID-19 epidemic heats up, the Central Epidemic Command Center holds a daily press conference at 2 p.m.

Have you found anything?

There is always a sign language interpreter (hand interpreter) in the corner of the TV broadcast screen who speaks fluent sign language and whose vivid facial expressions are very eye-catching, silently conveying the commander's spoken message to the hearing-impaired.

As the virus spreads, wearing masks has become a standard of life and the new normal. However, the hand interpreters at the press conference can not wear masks, which has triggered heated discussions among netizens. If you want to understand the reasons for not wearing masks, you should first understand the language of sign language.

.

Figure 1 In order to clearly present the message content, it is not suitable for hand interpreters to wear masks while working.

Recaptured from the live broadcast of the Epidemic Command Center to communicate with the world through silent language. Sign language replaces sound messages with specific gestures and facial expressions. Therefore, not only hand movements, but also facial expressions are also part of sign language. Only by matching the two can the message be conveyed accurately.

.

Compared with spoken language, in addition to facial expressions, speech and emotion are also expressed through cadences. For example, when asking questions, the intonation rises, or when speaking impassionedly, the overall pitch increases significantly. Sign language expresses emotions through facial expressions.

For example: The following two pictures show the difference between "happy" and "very happy" respectively. When the sign language movements are the same, the differences in facial expressions represent different levels of emotion.

"Sign language interpreters do not do these performances on their own initiative. They do it to meet the needs of translation and to match the expressions they express when speaking." (Zhao Haochun, 2020) Wei Rujun, chairman of the Taiwan Sign Language Interpreters Association, also specifically said in an interview

emphasize.

Therefore, requiring translators to wear masks is like asking spoken language users to speak in the flat tone of a robot without any inflection. It not only makes people suspicious, but also hinders understanding.

Figure 2, Figure 3: When the movements are the same, sign language expresses the degree of emotion through expressions.

KaiDeaf Sign Language Video Dictionary Common communication modes for hearing-impaired people As of the first quarter of 2021, more than 120,000 people in Taiwan *** are hearing-impaired (Statistics Office of the Ministry of Health and Welfare, 2021), and hearing-impaired people

The main modes of communication are sign language as mentioned above, and spoken language. Some choose to communicate mainly in spoken language, while others choose to communicate mainly in sign language. According to different proportions of sign language use, the common communication choices are the following four (Gravel &

O'Gara, 2003), using only sign language or spoken language as the communication mode lies at either end of the communication model, with other communication laws scattered in the middle.

Yawen Foundation As mentioned above, sign language includes gestures and non-gesture parts that match each other. Gestures include hand shape, position, movement direction and action, while the non-gesture part includes facial expressions and body space distance to express (Yang Yahui, 2015

), in Taiwan, China, sign language is divided into "natural sign language" and "grammatical sign language". "Natural sign language" is a sign language naturally developed by hearing-impaired people for communication. Its vocabulary and word order are different from spoken Chinese; "

"Grammatical Sign Language" is a language based on the grammatical correspondence of Chinese spoken language. It borrows vocabulary from natural sign language and uses "one word, one gesture" to type out the spoken vocabulary (Liu Xiudan and Zeng Jinxing, 2007).

It is learning spoken language through listening and using spoken language as a way of communication.

The first step to listening to sounds is to wear suitable hearing aids, such as hearing aids and electronic ears.

Use assistive devices to receive external sounds and adjust the volume to achieve the effect of hearing sounds.

However, no matter which kind of assistive device, the sound received has been processed, which is different from the general hearing perception.

Therefore, after wearing assistive devices, you still need to learn how to listen and gradually connect the sounds you hear with the meaning they represent.

Not only speech, but also sounds in the environment, such as car horns, knocks on doors, phone calls, etc.

Think about it, even a baby with normal hearing needs many experiences to understand when he hears a knock on the door. This "knock, knock" may be the sound of someone knocking on the door.

Figure 4 Through auditory aids, hearing-impaired children can acquire hearing aids, and then learn to listen to sounds and develop spoken language.

The Yavin Foundation is a visual communication method.

When the mouth speaks naturally, the position of the gestures on the face is matched to correspond to different phonemes.

The hand marks different vowels in four positions near the mouth, and eight different gestures combined with lip shapes mark different consonants, allowing the hearing-impaired to spell out words visually (Gravel & O’Gara, 2003).

Although the suggestion method is used in conjunction with spoken language, it still focuses on gestures rather than utilizing remaining hearing.

In addition, the gestures of suggestion are different from sign language and cannot be called sign language.

This method has been applied to sixty different languages, but a standardized system has not yet appeared in Chinese (Liu & Feng, 2019).

Figure 5: The suggestion method marks different phonemes through the matching of gestures and gesture positions.