Q: What about interpreting services for deafened people?
A: Before addressing sign interpreting,
it is essential to talk about non-signing. Almost all
deafened adults become deaf without linguistic
preparation, i.e. haven’t learned sign
language in advance. In my acquaintance with
hundreds of deafened people, I know one woman who was
already a teacher of the deaf, and one man who was
married to an interpreter. Even those who are deafened
“by appointment”, i.e. surgically severing the
auditory nerves, don’t seem to get communication
access preparation ahead of time. You don’t
immediately become a competent lipreader either.
Therefore, all deafened adults need real-time
transcription sometimes, at least temporarily. Even
computerized notetaking, is not adequate for the same
level of access as sign language (and hearing) provide,
and real-time court-reporting is
required. Oral interpreting is so far inferior to
transcription in terms of ease of use that I personally
think it should be reserved for those who specifically
want it, like cued speech. Intensively promoting it makes
very little sense to me. Some deafened people choose not
to learn to sign, don’t ever consider the idea, or
can’t seem to learn it. Those people will continue
to be real-time transcription users as long as they go to
events where they need access.
Other deafened
people do learn to sign, and attain
different levels of skill and adopt different linguistic
patterns. Many say they have better receptive skills for
ASL than they can express, except they have a hard time
absorbing fingerspelling. This leads me to basic
recommendations for interpreting for signing deafened
people.
- sign a generic sign that matches the semantic meaning, and clearly mouth the specific term, rather than signing by fingerspelling the specific;
- you can’t model your interpreting on the ASL-ness of what they express, as you might do with always-deaf people; it probably should be a little less-English than they use. If the discussion is about the wording of a policy, then the exact English is important. If the client needs to be able to respond to the person’s exact words in a debate, then it needs to be more Englishy than ASL, but you still don’t usually need the “the’s” and they can lipread the “-ness’s” and the "-ment’s" etc. In most discussions, it’s a lot less repetitive motion (for you) and eyestrain (for the client) to use ASL without going overboard on idioms. Using classifiers and placing the actors in space also reduce the mental workload by taking advantage of the visual-spatial wiring of the brain. But just because the person doesn’t tend to spontaneously produce ASL idioms doesn’t mean he/she doesn’t understand them.
- because these recommendations may not suit everyone, always ask for feedback. (All good interpreters do anyway. The best interpreters are always the ones who seek feedback actively, i.e. not just fishing for compliments. The ones who need it most never seem to ask.) Especially for deafened people, the feedback should be requested in a specific way. The inexperienced signer may feel inferior to the interpreter, blaming non-comprehension on their own sign skills, and be reluctant to teach Grandma how to suck an egg. Deafened people usually don’t have the deaf-culture bluntness to volunteer feedback or to give feedback (other than “fine, just fine”) to a general question. Test comprehension if appropriate, or try to weasel feedback out of the clients in a discussion of sign language in general.
There will always be an interpreter who is the first
interpreter the deafened person ever books. If the client
is not known to be an experienced client, or obviously
lacks familiarity with how it works, it would be
considerate of the interpreter to give gentle hints, e.g.
how to get timing cues from the interpreter to know when
(and how) to speak up with the hearing people, what
signals the interpreter will use to indicate it is
her/him talking and not the speaker (many interpreters
can’t quite make this obvious enough and it’s
very confusing if you aren’t an experienced client),
how to choose the most effective seating arrangement,
etc. Reassure them that it’s your job to
make them understand; it’s not their job to measure
up, pass or fail, like a sign language midterm. Explain
that you can rephrase or repeat if they give you a facial
expression cue. In other words, defer a little less if
the client doesn’t know what will work best. Use the
experience of interpreting to advise the client, in terms
of communication function (not social work).
If you’re
assigning interpreters, don’t just assign someone
who automatically signs Exact English. I had a hard time
in the beginning, because the agency liked to assign the
“signed English” interpreters to me. They
figured I knew less ASL and I knew more English than the
average client. Unfortunately, these interpreters were
just as hard on my mental processing as they were on
unilingual ASL clients’. New interpreting users need
the most experienced and most flexible
interpreters, not the most limited ones. The most
experienced interpreters will have instinctive (or
formalized) diagnostic abilities that they can use to
help the client understand his or her needs in order to
better explain them to the interpreters they will work
with in the future.
Appreciate the
special role interpreters have for deafened people.
I’ve learned a lot of signs from interpreters in
assignments. Unlike sign language classes, interpreters
are using terminology relevant to my work,
translating into sign the things I need to talk about.
This helps me to learn the signs I need to tell other
deaf people what I do, which eases my integration with my
new peers. Interpreters also can look at the deaf world
with the same ‘hearing’ baseline that the
deafened client has. Going just a little above and beyond
strict interpreting, even the occasional stray comment,
helps the inexperienced deafened person understand sign
language and the deaf world better.
Not all deafened
people are new to it either, and they may be quite
certain what they need and don’t need. They may have
been signing for 20 years; they may be the director of
your local interpreter referral agency or sign language
program. In fact deafened people may not be
distinguishable from deaf people when you first meet them
on assignment. Either you haven’t seen them sign
yet, or they seem to be skilful in some form or register
of sign language. If the assignment (a) is at an
uncommonly accomplished level or in an unusual area for
the majority of deaf people, and/or (b) the client voices
for him/herself, it may be worthwhile to ask whether
he/she is deafened and follow up with discussion of
preferred interpreting style, in case it isn’t what
you’d assume from their expressive signing.
Collaborate on signs for technical terms that make the
most sense for the client, as he/she may not be familiar
with the kinds of signs that deaf people use, or deaf
people may not have signs in that particular domain.
Interpreters
should also work on professional collaboration with
real-time court reporters. In events when both are
provided, interpreters always comment that the displayed
transcription relieves some of the the mental workload of
interpreting, relieving the “mental pipeline”
pressure. Court reporters that I know would like
colleagues with whom to discuss concerns and questions
about ethics, quality assurance, and other challenges of
the interpreting aspects of their service. Because they
more often work alone than interpreters do, and have less
opportunity to share with a partner. Another reason to
collaborate is that client companies may not know where
to get certified (CRR) reporters and may appreciate
referrals from others in the deaf-access business, such
as interpreters. There is so much unserved and
underserved demand for interpreting, so competition
should not even enter anyone’s mind. Deaf people who
are unilingual ASL or have weak English will not accept
replacing sign interpreting with real-time transcription,
but there is a huge unserved population of deafened
people out there who use neither and need to get used to
the idea that they deserve access of any kind. Local
interpreting groups should reach out to welcome CRRs into
their professional development programs and set up mutual
referrals.
