This project is devoted to make a cross check between the signs in different part of the Globe and also detect the missing terms and, if it is possible, try to choose only one sign for all the deaf people on the world.
At this moment we are translating to the English the book by Dominique Proust ( Les mains dans les étoiles,) which is out start point, and is only in French, and we are working with the collection of signs, which can be seen at: https://drive.google.com/openid=1c3Xr4AHUelkKC7Y_ZHImBEqYVjODr4PdbdMIzVoZj_E
A part of the allocated funds (4000 euros) are used to create the above website as well as to translate in english the french sign astronomy dictionary already cited. Within a short time, we plan also to start a spanish translation of the dictionary.
We also contacted several people to work on the project and in this sense, we received the information from Gary Quinn, Audrey Cameron and Tania Johnston who work for the Scottish Sensory Centre’s Science in British Sign Language Glossary project, based at University of Edinburgh. There are over 1,400 BSL signs for Astronomy, Biology, Chemistry, Geography, Maths and Physics on the Scottish Sensory Centre’s glossary website : http://www.ssc.education.ed.ac.uk/BSL/list.html
The BSL astronomy signs are on the University of Edinburgh’s website – Science in BSL glossary: http://www.ssc.education.ed.ac.uk/BSL/astrohome.html. There are also video clips of definitions for each astronomy term in British Sign Language with English text to make the website bilingual.
As an example, Star Constellation:
BSL sign: http://www.ssc.education.ed.ac.uk/BSL/astronomy/starconstellation.html#start
Definition: http://www.ssc.education.ed.ac.uk/BSL/astronomy/starconstellationd.html
So at the end of the first year, we can conclude that the program is well avanced in terms of gathering a maximum of informations and contact the relevant persons in order to include the maximum of terms and to homogenize them when e.g. for a designed object, several different signs can exist, most of them linked to the historic and semantic tradition of its own langage.
According to very well organized material in other countries (beyond France) it is possible to propose for the future
1. advance with the translation of the book to English and Spanish
2. Organize the internet sited devoted to the access to the information for the deaf .
3. Design a comparative Glosary of Astronomical Terms in sign language for different countries.
4. Prepare a database with the available tools to teach/learn astronomy for deaf.