LOUDER THAN WORDS. PHRASES AND GESTURES

The project "Louder than Words" is gaining momentum. In February, we prepared excursion scripts and determined the reference exhibits. This work was already carried out together with the project partners: we received recommendations and wishes from Olga, an interpreter of Russian sign language. She translated several tours of the museum halls for the focus groups and pointed out points of interest and difficulties.

March was devoted to work on the texts of the excursions. Three people are involved in the process - the author of the text, Olga, an interpreter of the RZLN, and Elena, a representative of the Deaf culture, who will be the narrator. Margarita Pozdnyakova, the project manager and the author of the excursions, comments on why it is necessary to revise the finished text.

"Tour guides are used to "live" communication with the audience. We see people's reactions, note which facts arouse interest, which format of presentation is preferable for a certain age. Often we answer questions and explain something immediately during the story. In a video tour, the speaker goes into monologue mode, and the listener has no opportunity to ask questions in real time. Therefore, I immediately replace or explain some terms and names, include information that is usually heard in response to frequent questions. We gained such experience when preparing videos and broadcasts during the pandemic.

But now I am faced with the fact that, first, the vocabulary of the hearing impaired and deaf is growing slower than that of peers without hearing problems. Secondly, some language that seems clear or even clarifying to us is difficult for the hearing impaired to understand. These include comparisons, compound sentences, and compound words. This is due to the fact that language constructions and principles of text construction in Russian sign language are quite different from the grammatical norms of the Russian language. What for me is a way to make speech figurative, "not dry", deaf people can take literally, because in sign language figurativeness is a way to facilitate perception and memorization. So, for example, I was advised to eliminate the phrase "always at hand" from the text. Since the museum has a task to create a video guide that is comfortable for deaf people, we devoted a lot of time to this work. It is interesting that such tasks help to actualize one's own potential, to find new interesting mechanics in working with information and text".

Halls and subjects are scheduled to be filmed in April-May, with filming of the narrator to begin in the summer. Stay tuned for more news on the project!

The project is implemented with the support of the Light Charitable Foundation for Social Assistance and Support.

# museum for everyone # thunderclap # inclusion in Grodekovsky # accessible museum # text language