Reimagining Sign Language Technologies: Analyzing Translation Work of Chinese Deaf Online Content Creators

While sign language translation systems promise to enhance deaf people’s access to information and communication, they have been met with strong skepticism from deaf communities due to risks of misrepresenting and oversimplifying the richness of signed communication in technologies. This article provides empirical evidence of the complexity of translation work involved in deaf communication through interviews with 13 deaf Chinese content creators who actively produce and share sign language content on video sharing platforms with both deaf and hearing audiences. By studying this unique group of content creators, our findings highlight the nuances of sign language translation, showing how deaf creators create content with multilingualism and multiculturalism in mind, support meaning making across languages and cultures, and navigate politics involved in their translation work. Grounded in these deaf-led translation practices, we draw on the sociolinguistic concept of (trans)languaging to re-conceptualize and reimagine the design of sign language translation systems.