The word "treat" is one of those English concepts that can mean many
different things and therefore has many different interpretations.
There is single widespread sign equivalent to the English word "treat."
For
example, "My kids like treats" = (SWEET, CANDY, COOKIE, CAKE).
If you mean "something sweet" then perhaps you should see the signs
CANDY or SWEET.
If you mean "taken care of" see:
TAKE-CARE-OF
If you mean "It is my treat" as in "I'll pay for it," See:
PAY
If you mean "He treats me well," you could sign, HE
NICE ME. He-HELP-me.
HE POLITE.
If you mean, enjoyable as in, "The performance was a real treat!"
Then sign TRUE ENJOY.
A student asked me how to sign the sentence:
"Sometimes people are not treated fairly."
That type of sentence may be challenging for some interpreters or
beginning-level students because the sentence is using passive
phraseology.
Sort of like the sentence, "He
was shot."
In ASL it helps to establish "who shot him."
You have to establish who is doing the shooting.
For example, you could sign "MAN, INDEX-left, SOMEONE-right (bodyshift
face-left) SHOOT-(toward left)"
One way to interpret "Sometimes people are not treated fairly" would be to
sign:
PEOPLE RIGHTS OPPORTUNITY EQUAL, EQUAL-(reposition)
EQUAL-(reposition) ALWAYS? NOT!
That ASL construct would indicate that people do not always interact fairly
with each other.
But if you by "not treated fairly" you mean a bunch of things like: taken
advantage of, discriminated against, prevented from progressing, given less
opportunity...etc. Then you will need to either sign all of that...or use
the rest of the discourse to make it clear. You don't just walk up to
another person and start signing about human rights issues...there must be a
context. To interpret a sentence like that out of context would require
several minutes of signing. You could have ten different interpretations and
any one of them might be more or less correct depending on the context.
You can learn
American Sign Language (ASL) online at American Sign Language University ™
ASL resources by Lifeprint.com © Dr. William Vicars
