When Accessibility Becomes Performance: Performativity as an Element and a Carrier of Accessibility in Sign Language Interpreted Music

Accessibility is a key concept in audiovisual translation. 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. Accessibility provisions for popular music, however, have not been as comprehensive as for other types of music. In order to facilitate access to music for deaf 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. This 
practice, which is a form of audiovisual translation, is gaining momentum and has been the object of analysis in other disciplines (e.g., Musicology or Deaf Studies), but is under-investigated within Translation and Interpreting Studies. Working from studies in signed songs, from the work of Grant, and from Marinetti’s 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, and whether these practices actually facilitate access remains to be established by the deaf community.