What this app does is not translation. Translation is converting from one language to another. Converting from English (in written, spoken, signed, or semaphored form) to Japanese or to American Sign Language is translation. Signed English is English—not American Sign Language, not Japanese SL, not Japanese, not Inuktitut. This app converts from written English to signed English, which is no more translation than is converting from written English to spoken English (also known as “reading aloud”). English in Morse code is not Portuguese, it’s English. English, whether signed, spoken, written, or carried in Morse, semaphore, or Enigma code, is English. Encoding spoken English in Roman script (also called “writing something down”) is not translation, so neither is encoding English in semaphore or sign.

This app shows Signed English encodings of words, which is useful to anyone who wishes to learn the coding system Signed English, which in turn is useful for academic discussions of the English language. It is not used for everyday communication, but one might imagine it’s very useful to have means of expressing English without continually writing.

Learning Signed English can be detrimental for those who wish to learn a signed language, like American or British Sign Language. Those who have knowledge of Signed English can mistakenly apply that knowledge to a signed language, and the un-learning of those encodings can be more than a trivial complication.