PETALING JAYA: Tan Lee Bee is someone everyone sees but no one hears.
She is a household name, gracing our television screens during prime time news with her rendition of the day’s stories in sign language.
But she is more than a news reader. She has dedicated decades of her life teaching sign language to the deaf.
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The 65-year-old has taught at schools, hospitals and even interpreted religious sermons at houses of worship. She was also the first court sign language interpreter.
Tan learned the language to be able to communicate with her sister who is deaf.
BIM, she says, is not something that can simply be taught in classrooms. While BIM has similarities to the American sign language, it is also very localised.
“BIM is not sentences. Suppose you want to ask: ‘what is your name?’. You don’t sign, what is your name? You sign, name you, you know, that’s all.
“Or awak sudah makan (have you eaten) becomes makan sudah,” she explains while demonstrating the use of BIM.
“I may be saying you’re beautiful, but my facial expression doesn’t show that you’re beautiful. That means you’re not beautiful (to them).
“It is not only the sign, it has to come together with facial expression and body language.”
The language also involves acting and lip reading.
She explains that she would act out scenes to explain a word.
For example, the word pulih (heal) and pemulihan (rehabilitation) would require a sequential explanation to put the word into context.
Tan says it is extremely important to integrate with the community to be accepted by them.
“You have to mix with the deaf. It takes many years to be able to master the BIM, not one year. I have been working with the deaf for 46 years.
“The deaf community throughout the world have the same culture. It doesn’t matter if they are Africans, Arabs, Chinese. They will not accept any normal people to come into their community unless you can sign like them, behave like them.”
Tan explained that education is a challenge for many who are born deaf and whose command of common languages is not strong. Hence, it requires specific methods to explain words to them.
Despite spending decades teaching sign language, Tan feels she has yet to reach 100% when it comes to mastering the language.
Asked to comment on the government’s plans to introduce BIM as part of the school curriculum, she says it is a good idea but the government needs to think it through.
“Do you have enough manpower to do it? Secondly, are teachers competent enough to teach?” she said.
“You need to have the orientation, the hand shape, the movement. Once the orientation is wrong, the whole sign is wrong. The meaning changes.
“The hand shape also has to be correct,” she says, adding that it will be better if the teachers teaching BIM are from the community.
