Acknowledgements

I could not have completed this book without the support of many wonderful people who have helped me. My thanks begins with Cynthia Roy, my advisor at Gallaudet University’s Department of Interpretation and Translation, for unending support in the development and completion of the work described herein and for her continued friendship. I am also particularly grateful to Paul Dudis, Julie Hochgesang, Melanie Metzger, Christopher Stone, and Sherman Wilcox, who have directly supported me in this project. Thanks also to Jenny Rieck for technical assistance. Other mentors and colleagues who have generously helped me during my journey as an academic include: Jean Ann, Ben Behan, Jeremy Brunson, Nina Coyer, Carol Erting, Laurence Hayes, Bob Johnson, Mike Kemp, Scott Liddell, Ceil Lucas, Brenda Nicodemus, Karen Petronio, Miako Rankin, Risa Shaw, Sarah Taub, Mary Thumann, and Betsy Winston.

A special tribute goes to the master translators featured on the American Freedom Speeches DVD (whose work forms the corpus used in my research): M.J. Bienvenu, Dennis Cokely, Patrick Graybill, David Hamilton, and Mark Morales. Their translation performances are inspiriting. I am indebted to Barbara Olmert and to Sign Media, Inc. who granted me permission to use their product for this project (those interested in acquiring their own copy can visit signmedia​.com). Thank you to Ceil Lucas and Gallaudet University Press for permitting me to reprint content (mainly in Chapter 4) from an article I had authored in Sign Language Studies (Roush, 2016). I’d also like to acknowledge the signers who served as sign models for the figures taken from the ASL SignBank lexical database (https://​aslsignbank​.haskins​.yale​.edu) and to thank Julie Hochgesang at Gallaudet University for making the ASL SignBank available to this project.

Appreciation to Esther Roth at John Benjamins Publishing Company and to Angeliki Athanasiadou and Herbert L. Colston, the respected editors of the Figurative Thought and Language series, who provided encouragement to bring this book to press. I am indebted to the anonymous reviewer for helpful comments.

I am grateful to my bilingual family who helped give me the ability to become a translator: Alice, Ray, Dawn, and Hansel. Thank you to my children Joey, Carli, Jordan, and Benji, who allowed me time to work on this project. And finally to my life partner, Lisa, words cannot contain my gratitude for her unwavering support. My heart cannot contain them either.