<<I'd tend to think that if you had a whole team from a school from the deaf, they would have no problem bringing along someone who could translate into sign language if the moderator agreed to read slowly enough.>> There are at least two major problems with this: (1) If the translator is translating the words *as he hears them,* then there will inevitably be a lag between when the hearing team receives a clue and when the deaf team does--certainly enough that such a team would, in effect, lose all buzzer races. [This could be solved by giving the translator a separate set of questions from which to work, except that....] (2) ASL does NOT have a one-to-one correspondence with English: it has its own grammar and syntax. [As one simple example, the English word "went" is represented in ASL by two signs: one for "go" and one that means "in the past." (I don't recall which one comes first.)] Moreover, many proper names and scientific terms would have to be spelled out, so there would need to be significant pauses for both the translator and the moderator in order to do this. Ultimately, using a translator, in some ways, would be like playing a team from, say, Italy, and having one moderator read to the American team in English, and one reading to the Italian team in Italian. [It appears that, at the present time, no ideal solution exists. That is not to say that there never will be one, but for the moment at least, it appears that any attempt to incorporate deaf players into the game is fraught with issues of potential unfairness. Obviously, that should not be construed as saying that the circuit shouldn't make every effort to find a solution.] --STI
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