With the goal of disseminating sign language throughout Asia and facilitating the social participation of hearing-disabled people, The Nippon Foundation has since 2002 supported the development and publication of sign language dictionaries in Hong Kong, the Philippines, Cambodia, and Vietnam. Partial sign language dictionaries and textbooks have already been published in these four countries, and are expected to be complete by 2009. Launched in October 2007, the second phase of this project marked the start of participation by Sri Lanka and Indonesia.

The Nippon Foundation first announced its sign language dictionary project to the media in Cambodia on February 23, 2008. On March 6, the Foundation held a ceremony to celebrate the start of the project’s second phase at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. At this ceremony, representatives from the four countries that had participated from the first phase presented the results of six years’ of work, while researchers from Sri Lanka and Indonesia reported their own activities.(Photo: Sign Language Interpreters from Vietnam, Cambodia and Indonesia)

The project differs radically from traditional approaches to developing sign language dictionaries, in that in each country the teams working on the dictionaries include both linguists and hearing-disabled people. Dr. James Woodward, a world-renowned linguist from the United States, serves as the overall project director. The hearing-disabled people chosen to participate in the project are required to attend classes in sign language linguistics and to deepen their knowledge and understanding of language in general before beginning work. Information on local sign languages collected through studies of hearing-disabled people is analyzed and edited for inclusion in dictionaries, resulting in works that faithfully reflect the language used in local communities of hearing-disabled people.

In the dictionaries, each word is accompanied by an illustration of the sign representing it, allowing users to look up signs for a particular word or a word for a particular sign. A sign language textbook will be produced and distributed with the dictionary to allow those with normal hearing to learn sign language.

“The number of hearing people who want to learn Vietnamese sign language grows year by year,” said Mr. Van Ho, who made presentations at the ceremony on behalf of the team producing the dictionary in Vietnam. “That makes this dictionary and textbook especially helpful.” This practical sign language dictionary appears to have already proven useful in communications between the hearing-disabled and people who can hear.(Photo: The venue of the ceremony)

Almost one and half years have passed since the UN General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which recognizes sign languages as valid languages. In reality, however, very few Asian countries regard sign languages as full languages. The Nippon Foundation intends to expand this project gradually in the hopes that sign languages will begin to be recognized as languages throughout Asia and that increasing numbers of hearing-disabled people will begin to participate as full members of society.