Interference: a case study of lexical borrowings in international sign interpreting

ABSTRACT In simultaneous interpreting studies, the concept of interference – namely, the marks of the source language in the target language – is perceived as a negative phenomenon. However, interference is likely to happen at a lexical level when the target language does not have its own lexicon. This is the case in international sign (IS), which can be defined as a mix of different sign languages, in which the lexical items are not fixed. This qualitative study analyses a dataset of interpretation from Sign Language of the Netherlands (NGT) to IS by a team of two Dutch, deaf interpreters at an international conference in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. We observed the occurrence of source NGT lexical items borrowed into the IS target output and considered the strategies used in this. The phenomenon was found to be recurrent. In addition, depending upon the type of lexical items, the strategies used to borrow NGT lexicon were found to differ. Thus, we have described the set of strategies and examined the results in comparison with previous findings. As a practical output, this study could inspire current and future IS interpreters to expand their set of interpreting strategies.

In simultaneous interpreting, interference is the mark of the source language in the target language, in which some characteristics of the input still appear in the output (Pöchhacker, 1994).Previous studies on simultaneous interpreting have shown that there is a high risk of interference between the source language and the target language during the interpretation process (Agrifoglio, 2004).This is mainly due to time pressure, and it varies depending upon factors, such as the direction of the interpretation process (Dailidėnaitė & Volynec, 2013).The interference can occur at a phonological-, grammatical-, or lexical level (Lamberger-Felber & Schneider, 2008).Interference at a lexical level is likely to occur when the target language does not have a conventionalised lexicon to fill this gap.
Situations in which communicative partners do not share (all of) a lexicon are not uncommon.This applies in English as a lingua franca for spoken languages, as well as in international sign for signed languages (see Bierbaumer, 2021 for similarities between English as a lingua franca and international sign).
In English, as a lingua franca, fully shared lexicons do not exist, because this is very much dependent upon the context.Researchers have observed a variety of different forms across different domains, groups, and situations.In international sign, there is also no fixed lexicon (Allsop et al., 1995), because international sign integrates lexical items from other established national signed languages.Studies have indicated a high percentage of the use of lexicons from the sign language of the country, in which the communication takes place (see Monteillard, 2001, for international sign communication in France, for instance).Our study considered the ways in which this gap was filled in international sign.
International sign (IS) is defined as a mix of different sign languages that reduces the use of lexical items in favour of other ways of expressing meaning.This is why most previous studies of IS have focused on its broader (non-lexical) iconicity (the resemblance link between the referent and the sign, 1 see Baker et al., 2016), rather than on the role of the lexicon (McKee & Napier, 2002;Rosenstock, 2008).In addition, previous studies involving IS interpreting have mainly focused on interpretation from spoken-English to IS (McKee & Napier, 2002;Moody, 2002;Rosenstock, 2008).What has been little studied (despite e.g.Stone & Russell, 2016), is interpreting from a national sign language to IS, with a focus on the lexicon content in IS.This is the focus of our study.
For this study, we chose to investigate a specific case of lexical interference in simultaneous interpreting.Our data was derived from a team of two deaf interpreters, who worked from Sign Language of the Netherlands (Nederlandse Gebarentaal: NGT) to IS, and who were active in a conference setting.We investigated if lexical interference from a source NGT discourse to a target IS discourse occurs.And, if so, we identified the set of strategies used to import source NGT lexical items to the IS target.This knowledge could be used to enhance the toolbox of current and future IS interpreters.

Characteristics of international sign (IS)
Collectively, deaf communities across the world communicate using at least 140 different sign languages (Eberhard et al., 2021).These signed languages show similarities in overall grammatical structure that likely stem from the shared modality, but they are not fully, mutually intelligible (Sáfár et al., 2015).Therefore, when deaf people from different countries meet and do not share a national sign language, they tend to communicate in IS (Hiddinga & Crasborn, 2011).IS is an umbrella term that refers to a combination of sign languages that leverages the iconicity present in every sign language (Rosenstock, 2008).
Current literature broadly refers to two types of IS: conventional IS (referring to IS interpreting or expository IS, one presenter directly expressing ideas in IS), and spontaneous IS (also referred to as 'cross-signing').Cross-signing is the dynamic bilateral or multilateral interaction of deaf people without a shared sign language (Zeshan, 2015).It allows them to negotiate meaning throughout the communicative interaction.IS simultaneous interpreting (McKee & Napier, 2002) or expository IS (Whynot, 2016) is more conventionalised, because it is mainly a unilateral interaction that is produced under more intense time pressure, by signers and interpreters with experience in this.This paper, thus, addresses IS simultaneous interpreting, rather than cross-signing.
With regard to IS as a general term, some interpreters might call it a 'language', while linguists tend not to.Linguistic studies do not agree on the linguistic status of IS (Hansen, 2016).Some experts have likened it to a Creole language (Supalla & Webb, 1995), while others have associated it with a pidgin language (McKee & Napier, 2002).Indeed, IS is more of a language contact phenomenon, rather than a fixed language (Kusters, 2020).IS is supposed to provide a means of communication that plays the role of a lingua franca, and is understood by as many people as possible.McKee and Napier (2002) have identified that the main challenge with IS interpreting is lack of a defined lexicon (p.48).Indeed, as a contact language phenomenon, IS has an 'impoverished lexicon' (Allsop et al., 1995, p. 187), even though it has its own grammar (as demonstrated by Supalla & Webb, 1995).However, its lexical items (i.e. its signs) vary depending upon the context -Where IS takes place, who is producing IS, and who is receiving IS.For instance, Monteillard (2001) found that the expository IS used by a deaf Danish person and a deaf American person at conferences in France between 1993 and 1999 were almost 50% comprised of French Sign Language (LSF) signs: We must first highlight the use of signs borrowed from the local sign language, in this case, in our video corpus, the standard signs of the LSF, these conferences having taken place in France.(p.7) 2 In addition, Sheneman and Collins (2016) found relatively many American Sign Language (ASL) signs in expository IS produced by three deaf African signers in the USA in 2012: '[…] the use of IS, considered as a mixture of their own native sign language and the hosting country's sign language […]' (p.168).Based on these studies, we have inferred that signs from the local context are frequently included as part of IS.
However, previous studies on the type of IS interpreters use have mainly focused on the grammar and iconicity that is common in many sign languages (e.g.Moody, 2002;Rosenstock, 2008;Stone & Russell, 2016).Indeed, to create widely understandable communication, IS interpreters take most advantage of iconicity and tend to reduce the use of lexicon to '[…] think beyond known lexicon […]' (Oyserman, 2016, p. 192).This is because lexicon is often perceived as 'the most variable and least transparent aspect of international sign communication,' (McKee & Napier, 2002, p. 41), so it is not ideal for comprehension by signers using different languages.However, lexicon from any given national sign language is likely to be part of the IS output.In other words, target IS output is likely to contain lexical interference from the source local sign language ('local' being understood as the country, in which it is being used).
To produce this target IS output, one umbrella strategy of IS interpreting is to emphasise meaning to ensure clarity (see McKee & Napier, 2002;Rosenstock, 2008).For instance, this can be done by 'making the abstract more concrete,' (McKee & Napier, 2002, p. 43), or by using different expansion techniques (as highlighted by Lawrence, 1994) for English to American Sign Language (ASL) interpreting.Still, expansion techniques, as highlighted by Lawrence (1994) and based on ASL, largely apply to IS as well (see Best et al., 2016;McKee & Napier, 2002).Therefore, in this present study, the analysis will also make use of this lens.Lawrence (1994) first introduced the concept of expansion in discussing interpreting from English to ASL.Expansion relates to the different techniques with which ASL (and many other sign languages) structures the discourse in a way that is not possible in spoken English.For instance, she describes the 'couching, or scaffolding' technique (a group of signs grouped together to form a concept), 'reiteration' (a sign repeated in exactly the same way), and spatial mapping (in which a location is indicated in the signing space).
During the presentation of our findings below, we relate these strategies with aims that we have extracted from our dataset.We organised the aims into four categories: explain, contextualise, describe, or guide.Within the aims, different strategies can be observed with some of them related to the previous findings.We present the categories separately, but they can overlap.
In the next section, we briefly discuss the concept of interference with the lens of IS, and present the research questions that this study aims to address.

International sign and the concept of interference
In spoken languages, Weinreich (2010) defines interference as; […] deviations from the norm of either language that occur in the speech of bilinguals as a result of their familiarity with more than one language.(p. 1) However, as discussed above, we cannot determine a norm for IS, because research shows that IS, as an instance of language contact, varies with the context.Kusters (2020) qualifies IS as a signing communication that is; 'porous for dominant influences' due to its 'not [being] a language' status.Then, this dominant influence can emanate from a national sign language that has a language status (NGT, in this study).
Besides, in any interpreting, there is also language contact between the source input (here, NGT) and the target output (here, IS).The interpreter processes two streams of discourse simultaneously: understanding and producing.We also know that translated text (written modality) is generally of a higher quality than an interpreted discourse (oral modality).This is due to the high degree of interference in simultaneous interpreting (see Kroll & Groot, 2009).Indeed, the time pressure of simultaneous interpreting might lead to marks of the source language in the target one.These marks can appear at a grammatical or lexical level (see Lamberger-Felber & Schneider, 2008).
With regard to this literature, interference has a pejorative connotation (Seleskovitch & Lederer, 1989).It is perceived as a negative phenomenon, a '[…] contamination [of the target text] with the source-culture material' language (Pöchhacker, 1994, p. 176).Here again, the term 'interference' as a negative phenomenon cannot apply to IS interpreting, because IS, is, in essence, influenced by many other sign languages, which may also include the source language.
Therefore, in this study, we prefer to use the word 'influence' instead of 'interference' to avoid the negative connotations of the latter term, which are often present in the literature.This 'influence' is twofold: the simultaneous interpreting situation from NGT to IS, and the use of IS as a mix of sign languages for an international audience.
Given that IS does not have its own lexicon, 'signers, therefore, have to decide whether to use signs from their own language, or from another sign language […], or one of the few signs recognised as conventional in IS' (Adam, 2012, p. 853). 3Therefore, in this qualitative study, we address the following questions: . Did the two Dutch deaf interpreters import source NGT signs into the target IS output?
If so, is this phenomenon recurrent or isolated? .If Dutch deaf interpreters imported source NGT signs into the target IS output recurrently, what strategies did they use in this?

Dataset
In 2018, we collected a dataset from a 40-minute inaugural lecture on the professional journey of a sign language linguist at Radboud University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. 4 This sign language linguist, the second author of this study, is a hearing late learner of NGT and a former Dutch/NGT interpreter.He presented his inaugural lecture as a Professor in NGT at Radboud University.Simultaneously, this lecture was interpreted from NGT to spoken Dutch by a team of two hearing interpreters, and from NGT to IS by a team of two Dutch deaf interpreters.The two deaf interpreters received the NGT source language via a screen.In addition, a hearing interpreter offered back-up support for the deaf interpreters' team.Each deaf interpreter had an interpretation relay of 20 min.
The two deaf NGT to IS interpreters and the hearing back-up interpreter did not receive any information on the research question of our study.They only knew the title of our research project: 'Deaf communication without a shared language', which was public information.However, they knew in advance who were going to be the deaf people in the IS audience.Actually, the interpreters received a really good preparation before the event.They received the slides of the lecture and the signing video of the professor beforehand.Then, one hour before the lecture, they met together in a room for one final preparation phase.Finally, all the participants (presenter and interpreters) gave consent to participate in this study and agreed with the display of fragments of their work for scientific dissemination.
From the audience's perspective, the IS interpreters were situated to the left of the screen where the slides were displayed.The lecturer stood to the right of the screen.Therefore, the interpreters and the lecturer were both standing next to the screen and could refer to the slides if required.Figure 1 illustrates this setting, focusing on the IS target (we dismiss the interpreting from NGT to spoken Dutch).We set up two cameras: one on the NGT presenter and one on the IS interpreter.
The lecture was addressed to a large, mixed (hearing and deaf) audience that included academic (researchers, professors, etc.) and non-academic (family and friends) attendees.The audience were mainly from the Netherlands, with a few from other countries.The IS interpreting targeted a deaf audience from Flemish Belgium (Vlaamse Gebarentaal: VGT), Germany (Deutsche Gebärdensprache: DGS), and the USA (American Sign Language: ASL).Both interpreters have ASL in their language repertoire, in addition to NGT (native signers) and IS.

Analysis
Due to the time-consuming nature of the analysis, we only analysed the first ten minutes of each interpreter's relays (20 min in total), half of the full dataset (40 min length). 5The video footage was annotated using ELAN software.
Firstly, we examined the lexical influence of NGT signs on the IS output.In this, we reviewed the NGT source discourse and then the IS target, and searched for sign borrowings.Using the same glossary, we annotated each source NGT sign borrowed in the target IS and the original sign in the NGT source.In parallel, a researcher, who is a deaf native signer of NGT, annotated our dataset with the NGT signs (without access to our annotation).We requested review of the IS interpreting output and notation of what she considered to be NGT signs.Afterwards, we could confirm if the signs we first spotted as NGT sign borrowings were indeed lexical.
Then we added two other tiers related to the IS target to annotate the way in which these NGT signs were borrowed.We distinguished between the sign borrowings imported with added extra strategies (one tier) and the ones without any (a second tier); see Figure 2.
For the analysis of the sign borrowings imported without any strategy, we considered the hypothesis that it might be because these signs overlap with the sign languages of the audience.Therefore, we asked a deaf native signer of each sign language represented in the target IS audience, ASL for the USA, DGS for Germany, VGT for Flanders Belgium to annotate if any given sign is part of the lexicon of their own sign language.
The deaf native ASL signer reviewed the full recording of the IS interpreting dataset and annotated the ASL signs.For the DGS and VGT signers, we proceeded differently for making a quicker process for the participants.We recorded all the signs borrowed without any strategy and asked them if each sign could be labelled as a lexical sign in their own sign language.Then, we repeated this with the signs imported with extra strategies in order to test our hypothesis.

Findings
During the 20 min of the recording that were annotated, we found a total of 100 different source NGT signs borrowed into the target IS output by IS Interpreter 1, and a total of 152 by IS Interpreter 2. However, many of these signs were used several times during the interpretation relay.That the case of the sign STUDY, for instance.It has been used up to three times but we counted it as one.Dismissing the repetitive uses of this sign, there was a total of 65 unique source NGT sign types borrowed by IS Interpreter 1, and a total of 78 unique NGT signs by the IS Interpreter 2. There could have been some overlap between signs imported by IS Interpreter 1 and IS Interpreter 2, but our analysis focused on results per interpreter.
The interpreters chose to use additional strategies to borrow some NGT signs and to use no additional strategy for others, importing NGT signs straight away.

NGT Lexicon Imported with extra strategies
To present the different strategies interpreters used to borrow NGT signs into IS, we chose to relate them to the possible aim behind the chosen emphasis strategy.The emphasis strategy can be trigged by the aim to explain, contextualise, describe, or guide.Within these aims, different strategies can be observed, and some of them relate to the previous findings detailed above.We have presented the different categories separately, but there can be overlap among them.

Explanation
Explanation means clarifying the NGT sign imported to the IS target.
Example 1: NGT.OFFICER > IS.OFFICER 6 .The lecturer welcomed and thanked attendees, including the OFFICER of the University.The interpreter chose to import this OFFICER sign to her IS target output.She imported it by explaining the sign: this person is in a high position that is related to the university.
In case of confusion, in the photos that we have presented, the lecturer is a left-handed signer, and the interpreters are right-handed.Here, the interpreter chose to group the sign representing a 'person in a high position' with the sign UNIVERSITY to build the concept of OFFICER.This relates to the expansion technique of 'couching, or scaffolding' (Lawrence, 1994).This relates to 'reiteration,' as the interpreter reiterates the same sign (Lawrence, 1994).This should not be confused with what Rosenstock (2008)  Here, before the interpreter imported the sign for the city of NIJMEGEN (where the event took place).She chose to relate the sign coming forward to the current space by pointing to the metaphorical present space (this stands for 'here').
McKee and Napier ( 2002) also observed this strategy when the interpreters were '[…] making literal reference to real-world location' (p.35) from their dataset.
Example 5: NGT.ARNHEM > IS.ARNHEM.Here, the interpreter chose to spatially map (Lawrence, 1994) the city of Arnhem, so that the audience could visualise its location in the Netherlands.This sign for ARNHEM was used again during the lecture, but then it was imported without any extra strategy because it had already been introduced.This could relate to the strategy of 'adding detail: judging ellipsis and redundancy' noted by McKee and Napier (2002, p. 45).The interpreter judged that the sign STRONG was not explicit enough, so he decided to emphasise it by contextualising its content.

Description
Description means importing an NGT sign with a strategy that depicts the meaning of the source sign.This is what Rosenstock (2008) refers to as 'repetition': the interpreter repeats the same meaning with a different sign.The gesture (two hands, palms facing upwards) also occurred in the dataset from McKee and Napier (2002), but in the context of a rhetorical question.In our dataset, this gesture served as a comment about the DECREASE and emphasised its negative impact.Here again, this relates to the expansion technique of 'couching, or scaffolding' (Lawrence, 1994).The signs FACE and NOD are supposed to form the concept of a facial expression.

Guidance
Guidance is importing an NGT sign with a strategy that aims to guide the audience and support their comprehension.It is a means to structure the discourse differently to assist the audience through it.
Example 9: NGT.SHOW > IS.SHOW.Here, the lecturer explained how facial expression is part of NGT and was about to display an example (SHOW).He did not point to the future example, but moved to his laptop to display it.The interpreter chose to import the NGT sign for SHOW by once again 'reminding' the audience what this example is about (an example in NGT) and pointing to where it was displayed (the screen).For this, she used two extra signs: SIGN and Pointing.This potentially corroborates other findings on the influence of English on IS.McKee and Napier (2002) have observed how lip patterns are based on spoken English.And Whynot (2016) found that IS presentations were reported to be easier to comprehend by viewers from Australia and the USA if English 'mouthings' were represented in the text.
Here, we observe another occurrence of English influence on IS interpreting: the use of specific constructions or expressions.

NGT lexicon imported without any extra strategies
In total, 81 single signs were imported without any extra strategies.This means that there was no extra sign or any linguistic structure preceding or following the source sign that aimed to describe, explain, or contextualise it, or guide the audience to understand it.We divided these 81 signs into four categories which can explain one of the reasons the interpreters chose to not use additional strategies to import these signs.We have presented the categories separately, but they can overlap.
Terminology Some terminology terms were imported without any extra strategy.This was the case for the signs that represent specialised terms used by linguists.

Country names
Many country names were imported without any extra strategy.However, this was not the case for local city names (see Examples 4 and 5).This is not surprising, as many signs for country names originally come from the countries' own signed languages.
After checking with signers of the languages involved and the website spreadthesign.com,we can confirm that this is the case here.The signs for the country names below (Netherlands, Sweden, Australia, and New Zealand) are all borrowed from the countries' own signed languages.For instance, this means that the sign for SWEDEN in Swedish Sign Language is the same in NGT, and so on for Australia and New Zealand.
Example 16: NEW ZEALAND

Signs representing timeline
Signs representing time were imported with no added strategy.In many western countries 7 , the use of space to visualise time is body-anchored in a sagittal axis of the signer.This means that the future is placed in front of the signer and the past is located behind them.Present is close to the signer's body, so generally there is no sign to mention the present tense.
There is a common thought that time is metaphorically expressed the same among signed languages, but it may actually be different.For instance, in Urúbu-Kaapor Sign Language, a sign language used in Brazil, time is body-anchored, but future is located above the head of the signer as something unknown and out of the control of the man (Ferreira-Brito, 1983) In IS, the expression of time follows the pattern well-described and observed in many institutional signed languages.
Example 17: PAST Example 18: FUTURE Signs common among the sign languages represented in the IS audience Of the 81 signs that were imported without any extra strategy, more than 50% overlapped with the signs used in the sign languages represented in the audience: 73% overlap with VGT, 56% with DGS, and 52% with ASL.The Dutch interpreters could not have done this deliberately because VGT and DGS are not part of their language repertoire (although they may know a few signs from the neighbouring languages).However, both Dutch interpreters are fluent in ASL.
By contrast, for the 44 signs imported with extra strategy, we observed that the overlapping with the audience's languages is smaller than for the signs imported without any extra strategy.For instance, we found the overlapping with ASL to be 40%, with DGS to be 52% and with VGT, 59%.
This might support the hypothesis that if a sign is perceived as very Dutch, the interpreter would tend to add extra strategy to import it, if they decide to import it.By contrast, if a sign is perceived as common in many of the sign languages presented in the audience, the interpreter would tend to import it without adding any extra strategy.This remains a hypothesis to be tested, in the sense that we do not know how the actual two interpreters perceived these signs at the moment of observing them in the source.In general, the finding supports the need to know, even superficially, the lexicon of many sign languages when it comes to IS interpreting.

Conclusion and implementation
This study aimed to offer a new perspective on IS interpreting by focusing on lexical influence in simultaneous interpreting from NGT to IS by a team of two deaf interpreters.IS interpreting is a twofold language contact phenomenon: it brings influences from the source language and from the essence of the target output, namely, IS, which is a mix of sign languages.
The results show that lexical influence from the source NGT language to the target IS output is not an isolated phenomenon.It happens frequently.Indeed, many source NGT signs were found to be imported to the IS target in a 20-minute segment.
Firstly, some of the source NGT signs were imported with extra strategies related to the aim to explain, context, describe, and/or guide.Within those aims, the overarching strategy remained the same: to emphasise (as demonstrated in the previous literature).This can be done by repeating, reiterating, couching, spatial mapping, locating referent in space, and adding detail.These strategies relate to previous findings on IS interpreting and sign language interpreting in general (Lawrence, 1994;McKee & Napier, 2002;Rosenstock, 2008).
Secondly, some of the source NGT signs that were borrowed without any extra strategy can be divided into different types of signs: terminology, country names, signs representing the timeline, and signs common among the sign languages represented in the target IS audience.This may offer insight into why the two deaf interpreters imported these signs without any extra strategy.Another methodology would be needed to delve deeper into 'why' these decisions were made.However, this pattern of importing signs without any extra strategy offers insight for future IS interpreters about what can be done.
In general, this paper confirms that local signs are an important part of IS output and IS interpreters must be aware of this phenomenon.To deal with this, IS interpreters must know more than one sign language to proficiently interpret IS.This skill gives them the tools to adapt their output for the audience.They will inevitably have to import source local signs and contribute to the implementation of these strategies, so we set up four aim categories.Knowing the aim, namely the 'why' behind each strategy, will give interpreters more awareness of possible choices, and can be used as a pedagogical tool as well.
Finally, this qualitative study opens the way for follow-up studies on practical implications of any given strategy on the interpreting task (Is the processing time longer?) or the interpreting result (Is the interpreting less idiomatic?).Can any given strategy be related to a specific reason for using it?Follow-up interviews with interpreters in studies like these could provide a specific answer.As the dataset for the present study is accessible to other researchers (see link to The Language Archive above), further studies can be conducted on the work of the interpreters.

Notes
1.For a non-sign language linguistics audience, signs in signed languages can be the equivalent of words for spoken languages.2. Translation from French to English proposed by the authors.3. IS does not have its own lexicon although it may have inherited some from the list of lexical items named Gestuno (British Deaf Association, 1975).Gestuno might be seen as the first step toward IS.In the 1950s, the World Federation of the Deaf (WFD) felt the need to construct a standardised sign language to be used at international Deaf events such as conferences.By the 1970s, they had published the first Gestuno manual, containing around 1500 signs.It was first put to the test in 1976, at the WFD congress in Bulgaria, but it was barely comprehensible by most attendees, and it was not used thereafter.However, Monteillard (2001) and Whynot (2016) identified some Gestuno signs in their datasets from the 1990s and 2011.
Example 2: NGT.ACCOMMODATE > IS.ACCOMMODATE.Here, the lecturer shared how he can accommodate between NGT and sign-supported Dutch, depending upon the context: ACCOMMODATE + SIGN-SUPPORTED DUTCH + SIGN.The interpreter chose to import the NGT signs ACCOMMODATE + SIGN by repeating the ACCOMMODATE sign twice and adding more pointing: ACCOMMODATE + Pointing + SIGN Pointing + ACCOMMODATE.He explains what ACCOMMODATE means by specifying where it takes place.
calls 'repetition': namely, 'the repetition of signs in more than one form' (p.144).Example 3: NGT.DANGEROUS > IS.DANGEROUS.Here, the lecturer shared how some hearing people associate sign-supported Dutch with NGT.He mentioned that this confusion can be DANGEROUS for the status of NGT.The interpreter chose to import the NGT sign DANGEROUS repeating it and adding an extra sign DEVIL.The sign DEVIL is iconic and represents the devil's horns.It is like he explains what DANGEROUS means by relating it to a dangerous character everybody knows or has the concept of.Contextualisation Example 4: NGT.NIJMEGEN > IS.NIJMEGEN.

Example 6 :
NGT.STRONG > IS.STRONG.The lecturer shared how he became increasingly fluent (STRONG) in using NGT.The interpreter chose to import the NGT sign for STRONG into his IS target output by contextualising it, saying that 'strong' referred to something deep inside of him.To do this, he used one extra sign: DEEP INSIDE.

Example 7 :
NGT.DECREASE > IS.DECREASE.Here, the lecturer spoke about the DECREASE in the use of sign languages in many countries.The interpreter chose to import the NGT sign DECREASE by adding a different form of the sign DECREASE that showed diminution.Then she added a gesture/facial expression to depict the inadequacy of this situation.
Example 8: NGT.FACIAL EXPRESSION > IS.FACIAL EXPRESSION.Here, the lecturer was still explaining how FACIAL EXPRESSION is part of NGT.The interpreter chose to import the NGT sign for FACIAL EXPRESSION by (partly) describing what a facial expression is.For this, he used two extra signs: FACE and NOD.
Example 10: NGT.DIFFERENCE > IS.DIFFERENCE.Here, the lecturer was speaking about the different (DIFFERENCE) facial expressions people can use when they ask a question.The interpreter chose to import the NGT sign DIFFERENCE by adding a sign related as an auxiliary verb (HAVE) to accompany the audience by structuring the discourse based on English (or Dutch): 'It has different … '.The signing structure HAVE + DIFFERENCE is based on the written/spoken structure of English and Dutch.In general, in signed languages like NGT, the sign DIFFERENCE in this context would suffice.In this IS instance, the interpreter chose to emphasise the DIFFERENCE by adding the sign HAVE right before.This structure HAVE DIFFERENCE instead of DIFFERENCE follows the structure of Dutch and English.