What is Print Interpreting?

It hasn’t yet been standardized just who can claim to be a print interpreter. Indeed, it hasn’t even been standardized what to call them. Massachusetts calls them "CART" Reporters: Computer Assisted Real-time Transcription. The National Court Reporters Association calls them Certified Real-time Reporters. We’ve seen a plethora of other terms including “notetaker”, “typist”, “captionist”, and “realtime writer”.
The ideal term will be concise and clear in its full English form—acronyms always have to be explained. (I can foresee someone asking, “Is it called ‘CART’ because that’s how you carry all that equipment?”) The term “real-time” is clear to reporters because it differentiates between the kind of services they produce on-the-spot and the kind transcribed afterwards. However, all interpreting is “real-time”, whether it is into sign language or Czech. (“Translation” is the term for delayed transcription between languages.) The term “print interpreter” harmonizes with other kinds of interpreters: “sign language interpreter”, “oral interpreter”, “French interpreter”. Each adjective describes the form of output when spoken English is received. Interpreting refers to simultaneous translation between two languages. I advocate the term “print interpreting”. It informs us that English is tranformed into print, on the spot. I reject fears of sign interpreters that print interpreters will usurp their role, and erode their client base. There are too few interpreters in many areas even to serve the ASL deaf population, and deafened consumers have historically been unserved. Furthermore, I doubt that the ASL users will tolerate a substitution of print for sign. To be sure, the key will be choice.

The Current State of Print Interpreting

Most print interpreting presently takes place in the form of closed captions on television or projected print at some sort of presentation or staged function, or in the classroom. However, print interpreting is not normally provided at the kind of one-to-one situations in which sign language and oral interpreters are more or less ready, willing, and able to function. It should be. What could be more appropriate than a print interpreter at the hospital bedside of a newly-deafened person? Full of questions and bereft of any means to communicate with a medical staff too busy to handwrite all the things they would say to a hearing patient…the deafened person needs print interpreting just as much as a born-deaf person needs an interpreter at his or her doctor’s office appointment.

Forms of Print Interpreting
(The Good, The Bad and The Ugly)

There are three main forms print interpreting can take: computer-assisted stenography (the good), computerized notetaking (the bad), and handwritten notetaking (the ugly).

Let’s waste no time discussing handwritten notes. Pencil and paper function quite well between two people, but can’t do anything useful for one deafened person in a group. With handwritten notes, the deafened person will know the general topics that the others have been talking about, approximately two topics after they have moved along. Access is not provided by making sure the deafened person knows “they are talking about the budget now”. Access is knowing exactly what is being said about the budget. Access is being able to join in the conversation and contribute. It would be far more cost-effective to read the minutes of the meeting than to waste the time sitting through it while somebody writes headlines on a notepad.

Computerized Notetaking

Computerized notetaking uses standard word processing software on various computers and display apparatuses. The theory is that this will maximize the pool of operators, ideally volunteers, and minimize the specialized training required. (What training these “notetakers” do receive is mostly just in the operation of their rig.) Pardon me for being unexcited by the prospect of having what I “hear” and don’t “hear” determined by a person whose chief merit is her minimal skills.
Computerized notetaking can be a very functional service provided to hard-of-hearing and oral-deaf consumers who can participate in events through lipreading or oral interpreters. In this case, computerized notetaking is not interpreting. These consumers merely want notes taken, because they can’t take notes and lipread simultaneously. This is not the case for many deafened adults who depend on the print to access the event as it occurs.
In the Association of Late-Deafened Adults (ALDA), we do use a version of computerized notetaking called “ALDA Crude”. ALDA Crude is a cheap way to facilitate communication in an ALDA group, where all of the participants are deafened, or at least highly sensitized to the role of the notetaker. My limited observation is that sign language interpreters often make ideal operators. Mental information processing skill acquired as an interpreter outweighs typing speed in providing appropriate, helpful notes. Even so, the product of Crude notetaking is…crude. In an all-deafened group, everyone is a user of the product, so there is no disadvantage to being dependent on this limited form of print interpreting.
Even at its best, computerized notetaking never gives the nuances of language; when you see your own utterances on the screen, it makes you want to give up English, just grunt Neanderthalese. In English, we couch our words with adjectives and modifying phrases to soften or emphasize points we want to make. Someone says, “Whatdya think about ordering some dinner now, because some of us haven’t yet eaten and if we don’t order now, maybe there won’t be a hearing person around to hear the door when the delivery man arrives” and the notetaker might transcribe “haven’t eaten, order dinner now”. A reasoned argument and quest for concensus becomes a dictate. No wonder people get up each other’s noses.
It’s at its worst when a deafened adult requires interpreting in the Real World. Bring a laptop and WordPerfect into a business meeting, and everyone thinks you’re all fixed up and ready to go. However, depending on the skill and judgment of the operator, you either get just the bits they think were important (euphemistically called “operator summarization”), lag way behind, continually interrupt the meeting to “slow down please”, or all of the above. While you are spending your time distracted from the content by the need continually to mentally unjumble the typos that the typist has no time to backspace and correct, the notetaker is committing further censorship. Operator-summarization is the greatest assault computerized notetaking commits on true access.
To the notetaker, who has no expertise in the specific domain of the meeting or event, and is trying desperately to keep up, some words may seem superfluous but may actually be critical words. Adjectives and other words of modification and emphasis often convey more than the subject-verb-object. Yet these are the first to go in notetaking. Print already lacks vocal inflections and intonations that often convey important content. (Take sarcasm…please.) Without the adjectives and digressions, the deafened adult reading print may quite readily form an inaccurate impression of what people are really saying. If this is not essential in the very business and higher-education settings in which computerized notetaking is presently being touted, then I can’t imagine where it would be!
With all due respect to those of us I am describing, deafened people relying on computerized notetaking can appear slow-witted, inattentive, rude or simply passive, and this can be entirely a result of the notes that they were reading. And usually these users are unaware of the poor impression they make because they have no idea how badly censored the notes actually are. I find that degrading; if I am going to humilate myself asking a stupid question, I want it to be my own stupid fault, and I want to be aware I have humiliated myself. For all these reasons, I doubt that that computerized “crude” notetaking can reach an adequate level to function as “interpreting”.
A few regular business users of computerized notetaking defend it. These people seem to share one common trait: they have a regular operator, usually their secretary, who does have domain knowledge in addition to high speed typing skills. It isn’t fair for agencies to cite these unrepresentative cases in support of this approach, and it is unhelpful for these consumers to contradict the consumer majority. Most consumers will call an agency and will get someone they have never seen before, who may or may not have a professional demeanor appropriate to the situation, and who may or may not remember where all the function keys are.
One ALDAn wrote to me: “we have really poor services here from an always-available Relay Service operator who is very nice, and I can’t bring myself to criticize her, especially since she is a volunteer.” Without objective standards and with this reliance on volunteer notetakers, the issue of satisfaction and equal access becomes an act of personal criticism. We are embarrassed into submission, I suppose, because when we become deaf but try to remain “hearing”, we get used to being mistaken.

Real-time Court Reporting

Real-time court reporting is most commonly used in captioning live television news and sports programs, and occasional meetings of deaf/deafened people. It is obvious that the key is preparation of the vocabulary. One wonders how the reporter captioning a baseball game could call Nolan Ryan a “pitch whore” (and after his unprecedented 7th no-hitter too!), or display the names of both teams and their cities exclusively in various incorrect ways, for the full duration of a 2 hour and 30 minute ballgame. The popular deafened discussion subject, “cochlear implant” has been captioned “cock leer implant” at a forum on the subject. The reporter captioning a deafened adult self-help workshop with a divorce-court vocabulary spent her lunch break on dictionary enhancement, trying to make the afternoon’s caption-reading less {heck time, hectic, festive, necktie}: if the captions offer nothing but choices all of the time, it’s not much better than lipreading. If the wrong word comes up, from time to time it will be plausible and misleading. And if non-words come up, the result can range from mirth to distraction: nothing short of clairvoyance was needed to understand what was transpiring during the Gulf War on the basis of the Big Three networks’ captions.
Still, only computer-assisted, real-time court stenography technology can keep up with the pace of human speech and even approach giving deafened adults access to the Real World. It must be the standard for Print Interpreting.

Why is So Little Print Interpreting Available?

One Canadian agency providing print interpreting services (in both forms) acknowledges the high quality of computer-assisted real-time stenography, but asserts that “the costs are prohibitive”. Unfortunately, the agency is perceived by the government and business community as an advocate for consumers, and such a value-laden statement gives others carte blanche to opt out of it. No one would dare to suggest the equivalent, of training a few volunteers in fingerspelling and sending them out instead of sign language interpreters, yet the agency expends considerable effort advocating laptop-word processing to the many institutions serving consumers who need print interpreting.
By providing mostly notetaking, the agency also prevents consumers from becoming aware of real-time reporting. If consumers have never seen real-time reporting, they might well be pleased to see computerized notetaking, because they have no idea what they are missing. Most of their consumers of Print Interpreting are Vocational Rehabilitation clients, young adults growing up hard of hearing or oral deaf. Most assignments are for classroom settings. Few deafened adults make it onto their client roster.
Our own behaviour contributes to our ignorance of the possibilities. By speaking, deafened people manage to be outwardly “normal”. Coming from the Hearing culture, which stigmatizes deafness (and stigmas are to be concealed), we often withdraw from communication problems when we become deafened, rather than draw attention to our needs by demanding solutions. Many “hearing health” professionals propagate the conventional wisdom that we can manage in the same old ways, by listening rea-a-a-al hard, and lipreading (other-people-can-so-why-can’t-you), and a fear of being considered a failure discourages us from blowing the whistle when these approaches are fruitless.
As long as the demand for Print Interpreting by real-time reporting is suppressed, few court reporters will acquire the unique skills required for interpreting. Where are the jobs that make it worthwhile to leave the courtrooms? Much of the existing real-time reporting is provided pro bono by members of NCRA—the National Court Reporters Association.
The efforts of Marylyn Howe and other ALDAns working in cooperation with NCRA came to fruition when the State of Massachusetts gave deaf consumers their choice of interpretation: sign or print. And in Massachusetts, Print Interpreting is defined as CART. Recognizing the chicken and egg dilemma, the State undertook to provide accelerated training, and maintains a roster of reporters who are certified in this skill. These are the core of those who will, I hope, be the Certified Print Interpreters of the future.

What is Enough?

To evaluate these alternatives for Print Interpreting, one has to have a mental image of the concept of “access”. The common presumption is that “anything is better than nothing”: any form of print interpreting is access enough. We need to realize that “the bad” and “the ugly” forms of print interpreting are harmful because they satisfy the desire for providing the service without actually providing the service. The provider thinks that the problem has gone away. (“Look! there is a notetaker sitting there!”) Although a laptop and temporary-agency typist might be cheaper than a court reporter with real-time skills, the investment in the service is wasted unless the deafened consumer can participate as fully as if he or she were hearing the proceedings. That means: a method which does not intrude and stifle anyone’s full expression, which conveys spoken utterances with as many of the nuances as can be conveyed by printed language, which keeps the deafened person up to the current topic of discussion.

As an aside, it’s amusing that people argue against sign language for deaf and deafened people, because it ostensibly “holds people back” and creates a barrier from the Real World. Proficiency in sign language liberates the deaf person from the lesser forms of print interpreting, and provides real-time access, in verbatim English if you want it. In contrast, based on ample business experience, I cannot see many major businesspeople halting discussions in 11th-hour negotiations so that a deafened right-hand man could put a word in…once the volunteer notetaker caught up. There are legitimate reasons a deafened person might not acquire sign language, but not the illusory barrier that some claim it would create.

What is Needed?

Deafened people, as a group…don’t really exist as a group. (Yet.) Many give up on linking with other deaf people when encountering the communication barriers with the born-deaf community, and never realize how many other deafened people there are. As isolated individuals, they have little opportunity to learn from the experiences of others and resolve to request equal access, including development and provision of print interpreting services.
Many ALDAns probably are so used to making their deafness invisible to the hearing people they interact with that they wouldn’t dream of requesting print interpreting in their Real Worlds, even though they devour it in their self-help meetings. Requesting print interpreting in the Real World is all the more difficult because there presently is no such thing in most places. Deafened people often have enough problems to deal with that political advocacy is the last thing on their agenda. If the providers would pitch in and help to legitimize print interpreting, it would free these people to request it.
We need to define what it takes to become a Certified Print Interpreter. We need solidarity in support of this standard among deafened people, including those whose needs can be satisfied by “lesser” technologies used by superior operators.
We need to raise our sights. It seems that public assembly and broadcast applications have been quicker to adopt print interpreting. But a great, hidden need is in one-to-one interpreting situations. To allow deafened people to fully understand doctor appointments, parent-teacher meetings, and legal dealings. To participate in the same fast-paced, complicated, business dealings that they carried on before deafness. Anyone can live without hearing one more politician’s rubber chicken speech or the Academy Awards show verbatim. But a doctor can’t obtain “informed consent” for surgery if he/she hasn’t gotten the full story through to the patient. We can’t attain our professional potential by relying on the half of the story we get from lipreading or notes. And that’s what access means. The ability to attain our potential, regardless of our deafness. Print interpreting is the key to access.

This article originally appeared with my permission in
the 1992 ALDA Reader