Sign Language Vs Captioning

Many people understand and speak English language but there are a lot of people who would like to start their business in their native language. We are sure if you want your business to reach every corner of the world, you would like to have captioning or sign language services for your clients especially for deaf or hear of hearing ones. Understanding your client’s preferences and working in accordance with it shows the professionalism of any business. Even if you are not expanding your business yet and only going on business trips then how will you jump over that language barrier? It’s easy, you will have captioning or sign language services!  

There’s no denying the fact that Coronavirus pandemic has changed the world of numerous people particularly for the hearing-impaired individuals who face different challenges, literally daily. As the Covid-19 started, higher authorities initiated to hold daily conferences to educate the community through the Internet and television. For this deaf community, people often ask if the need of sign language services is enough or will captioning provide the things which they deserve? We at Languagers, believe that this topic in general initiates a whole new subject and the answer is not straight. So, let’s get this started.  

Need of Sign language Interpretation  

The past conferences during Covid-19 times – encountered several problems at these meetings. In other cases, the interpreters are not accessible in the live feed since the camera settings have been adjusted on the medical officer’s speech with captions on screen. Government officials found a lot of criticism from deaf individuals who did not know what to do to stay healthy and safe (with on screen captions). There has been a trend to reduce expenses and use captioning services but people believe that these are still not perfect in most cases.  

Sign language services in Deaf community

Besides, Sign language Interpretation can provide assistance to your business by helping you prepare for your international marketing plans, signaling different functions, and you can consult hard of hearing people throughout your business meetings. Sign language Interpreters can help you cover the gap that is present between the targeted and the original languages. Sometimes these ASL interpreters even ask questions raising their eyebrows and hence, captioning services do not help to get the final result we want! No one wants such blunders on their globally expanding business or daily routine tasks therefore thinking about captioning services sometimes may seem a little vague! 

Need of Captioning Services  

For the deaf community, captioning services are also needed as the ASL might not be enough to handle things. Captioning informative videos will benefit the deaf people to understand more, have a hold on data, know more vocabulary and they may grasp things faster. However, sometimes, the presence of ASL is not needed depends on the situation for instance there are YouTube channels that cover several COVID-19 topics with captioning services right on point. The way deaf people communicate depends on the extent of their hearing loss and the way things are for them in school. Some people have sign language training while others receive oral education or might learn English as a second language. 

Sign Language vs Captioning 

What technique do you favour the most to visually represent speech on the media platforms for the deaf people? This refers to the fact that post-lingual or pre-lingual deafness approach is there. To ensure that everyone has full access to such videos, we must have both options including Sign Language Interpretation or Captioning Services. Due to the different preferences, backgrounds, and native languages of video viewers, it will be great to offer both English subtitles and ASL services to ensure access. To know more, feel free to contact us at Languagers.