When Accessibility Becomes Performance: Sign Language Interpreting in Music and Live Concerts as "Performative Rewriting"

Accessibility is a key concept in audiovisual translation (Matamala, 2020). In recent years, the importance of equal access not only to information, services, and media, but also to the arts has been gaining more attention (e.g. Greco, 2017). Accessibility provisions to popular music, however, have not been as comprehensive as to other types of music (Desblache, 2020). In order to provide access to music to Deaf and hard-of-hearing signers, a generation of interpreter-performers started to embody nonverbal elements of the ‘text’, such as rhythm, pitch, tempo, etc., when translating a song into sign language (Clementi, 2020; Galloway Gallego, 2016). This practice, which is a form of audiovisual translation, is gaining momentum and has been object of analysis in other disciplines (e.g. Musicology or Deaf Studies), but is under-investigated within Translation and Interpreting Studies. This article argues that the perspective from Translation Studies scholars, which has thus far been lacking, can provide new insights to this audiovisual translation practice whilst also enhancing our understanding of it. Working from studies in signed songs (Maler, 2015), from the work of Grant (2013, 2015), and from Marinetti’s (2018a) notion of translation as “performative rewriting”, I aim to show that performativity, intended as an action related to performance, but also with transformative potential, can become an element and a carrier of accessibility, and is at the core of these interpreting practices. The distinction between accessibility and access, however, must also be taken into account (Greco, 2016), and whether these practices actually provide access remains to be established by the Deaf community.