Idioms and Phrases : How will the Hearing Impaireds understand?

Since we all know that Sign Language is the official languge for Deaf (Hearing Impaireds), have you ever wondered how they use Idioms and Phrases in their conversation?

We, "normal/hearing" people use lots of Idioms and Phrases in our daily conversations and in our emails but they hardly use any Idioms and phrases in their conversation. Reason being either they don't know these idioms exist nor someone had taught them these in their school or college days. The teaching of idioms to deaf children has been and still is a major problem in schools and colleges. Since most of the conversation gets limited to only Sign language, and at times, its hard to even convey basic english words so usage of idioms and phrases were not given much importance in their school or college days. Also they would take literal meaning of the phrase which would make them even more confused. But when they start working for a corporate, all these sounds greek and latin to them.

Challenges: I always used to wonder esp during interpretation that how should we convey the actual meaning of these idioms and phrases. Also just by doing signs for these idioms, we cant convey the meaning.  

For Example : Beating around the Bush. If I have to do signs for Beating, Around and Bush, none would understand the meaning. Either we need to rephrase or do some small role play to make them understand. By the time we convey, the speaker would have moved to another topic and there are chances that audience might miss these important idioms and the implied meaning associated with it. Conveying literal meaning of these idioms will actually mislead the audience.

I have seen in few political speeches wherein usage of proverbs, idioms, phrases are maximum esp during campaigning. If we consider that there are people who cant speak(about 18% of India's Population have hearing impairment), how will they get to know about their constituency, their minister and their policies before they decide whom to vote. Guess this will take time, good that few hearing impaired leaders are taking centre stage and are trying their best to make our government inclusive.

Tips : During presentations or seminars or any conference, we should always keep in mind the type of audience. If there are speech and hearing impaired audience then better to avoid idioms and phrases or let the interpreter takes some extra time to convey the exact meaning.

During one of my Training program, I just took an effort to explain few idioms and phrases to hearing impaired participants. I wrote two idioms and asked them to find out the meaning.

Raining Cats and Dogs : As expected, I didn't get any correct answer. Everyone assumed that when it rains, cats and dogs fall on earth and they couldn't connect too. Then I explainded them the real use of this idiom and they were totally surprised. They told that this is the first time they have read this idiom. Next day, it was raining heavily and one of my student came back and told "Sir, it is raining cats and dogs" :) I felt so happy and appreciated them for using this idiom at right place.

Cloud Nine : Another widely used idiom, but none could tell me the correct answer. Instead of giving them the answer, I just explained few scenarios with this idiom. Now everyone understood and they got to know what value it makes in the sentence instead of using some simple phrases. Next day during one of the activities, to my surprise, few participants wrote " I am on cloud nine".

Now as a trainer, this is the moment you would be waiting for where you see the participants using what they had learnt. So motivate them to start using these idioms and phrases in their daily conversation. This would actually make them more confident and productive at work place. This is only a start, hopefully I would see many hearing impaireds using idioms and phrases in next few years.