AUstralian Sign LANguage. The language of the Australian Deaf community. Has strong links with British Sign Language. It consists of about 4000 documented signs, but is not limited to these, as signs can be improvised or fingerspelled. Fingerspelling is acommplished using both hands, as distict from the single-handed fingerspelling of ASL. Note that words do not map to signs directly, rather Auslan and other sign languages are independent languages of themselves. There is a system based on direct translation of signs from spoken English, called Signed English, but this is abhorred by many Deaf people.