Mandela memorial sign language interpreter was fake

Of course he was vetted! Obama knew exactly the message he was suppose to deliver. They think we are so stupid that we will assume they are more stupid than us and we will think they just made a mistake.

This is funny. Although he's making everything up, at least the guy in this joke video tried. That Mandela memorial faker wasn't even trying. I just adopted a boy who can't speak, so we are learning sign language together. My husband just got his first level ASL (American Sign Language) certificate at the local deaf school.

Even if he wasn't using ASL, he would have had to fingerspell some of those names, which he totally didn't do. Total fake.

I am appalled at this. I can't figure out why they would do it other than they wanted the guy up there and didn't want anybody to know who he really was. As an empath, I saw that he seemed a bit afraid and worried. I would imagine that a security presence would have been expected, so I don't know why they would try to cover it up.

But his cover is blown now.

Totally weird.

Nepotism.

It just occurred to me. I bet this is some important guy's nephew or brother-in-law's cousin that was owed a favor. Dude needed a job, so they made one up for him to return the favor.

Done.

I *HOPE* there are those sorts out there. I really do.

Wow great job Africa

wow! i said that back on the mandela live thread!

i'm certainly not a signer, but i woorked with a woman for 5 years who was... and i questioned his signing... and then part way through the entire event he would specifically block the visual path to certain people on the stage.. i posted he was probably a body gaurd placed there to take a bullet....

This guy needs to get the

BABABOOEY MEDAL OF HONOR

He looks likea. Fuckin moron trying to act all cool

of course

let Occam Razor make you dumb once again

"the simplest expalanation"

my ass


THIS WAS A SECRET CODE MESSAGE FOR THE ILLUMINATI INSIDERS

Period

Lot of liberal talk shows actually made fun of it today

And apologized


Yeah right they don't give a fuck

Sign language is not universal folks...

in the orginal post it says the signer didn't follow what the speaker was saying?

does that mean he was signing legit shit?

if so, what was it..

would be awesome if he kept repeat signing.

ison, nsa, yada.. the end is neigh, doom on!

That's some funny shit right there! The ladies accent in the attached video is awful! I usually love accents but what the hell? It sounded like Scottish, which I usually love.

It sounds like these 2 ACs actually know what I'm assuming is supposed to be ASL.

We're his translations correct? Was there anything suspicious about this signing?

Ugh thank god the Mandela news cycle is over


This was an embarrassing end for it


Unbelievable

I kind of lean toward the "alternative message" theory as well, a possible signal meant to be picked up by those in the know.

Of all the friggin' dignitaries present, who else amongst them had this happen to them?
Who made this guy an interpreter? White House staff, or the event organizers?
I can't wait to hear the "official" explanation on this one.

Very good point that he was placed there in case he needed to take a bullet. Would of made any shot on the leaders more difficult.

They don't use ASL in South Africa, they use SASL. South African Sign Languge.

[link to en.wikipedia.org]

Except for one guy, he just waves his arms around and mimes stuff. And that one guy is the one who gets the top sign language jobs for some reason!

I was watching it on CNN, and the consensus was that the sound system at the stadium was really bad.

White House had nothing to do with organizing the event. This guy "signed" for every speech, not only Obama's.

There will be more....the funeral.

Do you believe that was the only thing that was fake?

[link to www.theguardian.com]

The man who signed for a section of the ceremony, including Barack Obama's speech, was simply making up his own signs, he said.

There had to be other interpreters, according to the article provided by the OP. This man only had a portion of dignitaries to cover. I would like to know which others he was supposed to sign for, as I did not (would not) watch the ceremony.

The event organizers were South African. I know this.

maybe he only knew 1 language and so made it up? i do that with foriegn songs... grin....

CP, if that turns out to be the reason, and nothing more, I'll burn my soapbox.

Their President, our President is fake, too

Gosh I hope so. And I thought Steve Jobs was bad....

I call absolute 100% pure BS on this.

While different sign languages use different signs (based on a sort of collective cultural experience... ASL has an idiom for Coca-Cola that is a finger gun shooting into the non-dominant arm because Coke's slogan was once "A shot in the arm!" or something similar - the sign for things like House, Village, City might vary based on the culture) there is a commonality in the use of spatial context to establish things like verb tense (I am/I was/I will be) and subject/object agreement - which this 'interpreter' completely ignored. It's gibberish no matter which language.

(This is not always true - there are some pidgin sign languages created in small groups of mixed culture/written language Deaf/deaf children but you wouldn't ever expect these to be represented by an interpreter or exist outside of a small group - and dude still wouldn't make sense.

They're still fascinating in their development - it's the same as any pidgin really, rules on the language have to be developed amongst a cohort of speakers - so while contextual clues may not be apparent to outsiders they still exist. It speaks wonders of the linguistic abilities of children.)

The sign I am most familiar with for "bullshit" is the ASL sign of laying the forearms on top of each other, with the dominant hand cantered up to 45 degrees, with bull's horns (index and pinky finger) raised, and the non-dominant hand cantered down to 45 degrees in a fist, with a quick full-fingered splayed motion (indicating shit.) It's quite rude, as you would expect.

How many friggin' dignitaries are there? Bodyguards would be expected, ffs.

Somebody, somewhere knows what that guy was saying.