IW 80: Interview Marty Taylor Part 2: The Eloquent Interpreter with Attitude!

Sign Language Interpreters with Altitude?? No, ATTITUDE!

Marty Taylor and I discuss:

• ethics in the beginning of her career,
• attitude defined by ASL and English,
• spoken language interpreters differing perspectives,
• and how to use her books.

So much information to delight your cognitive powers. Next week we start with how Marty would start an interpreting degree program today.

Until next time....

Transcript

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IW 80: Interview Marty Taylor Part 2: The Eloquent Interpreter with Attitude!

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[ROCK INTRO MUSIC STARTS] 

00:00:02

Good morning, good evening, good afternoon. Wherever you are, this is the Interpreter's Workshop podcast. I'm Tim Curry, your host. Here we talk everything sign language interpreting the ins, the outs, the ups, the downs, the sideways of interpreting. If you're a student, a new interpreter, experienced interpreter, this is the place for you. If you want to know more, go tointerpretersworkshop.com

00:00:28

Let's start talking... interpreting.

00:00:34 Tim

And now the quote of the day by Craig D Lounsbrough, American professional counselor and author.

00:00:43 Tim

“Some people want to know where the river begins. Others want to know where it ends. However, I want to know how to navigate it so that I can be part of both without ever having to see either.”

00:01:01 Tim

While this quote might touch a little bit on the philosophy of life of living, I can apply that to interpreting and the interpreting process, focusing on how we navigate through the interpreting process helps us improve the beginning and the end.

00:01:21 Tim

Learning to navigate through the profession helps us focus on what's important. The different pieces and parts, the details that make up the whole, the bigger picture.

00:01:34 Tim

Staying engaged with the communities we serve and improving ourselves to improve that service.

00:01:42 Tim

Today, we continue our conversation with Dr Marty Taylor and we discuss ethics from a different angle with the English definition versus the American Sign Language definition of attitude and how that connects with our ethical perspective as a profession.

00:02:03 Tim

We also touch on the perspectives that might differ between sign language interpreters and spoken language interpreters, and we learn a little more about Marty's business Interpreting Consolidated and how it all started from her first book. Enjoy this episode that is jammed together with a lot of fun.

00:02:27 Tim

And don't forget the humorous outtake at the end.

00:02:32 Tim

Let's get started.

[SHORT TRANSITION MUSIC]

00:02:37 Tim

Let's go back again to the beginning of your career as an interpreter. Throughout our profession, we always categorize our workshops in… kind of two basic camps, it seems like. One would be kind of the ethical decision-making group and the other is more about the skills that we need as an interpreter of the process of interpreting that sort of thing.

00:03:00 Tim

If you think back to the beginning of your education as an interpreter, including those first few years or first few steps in interpreting as a professional, did you see a difference from there to here? From then to now, in how we handle the ethical dilemmas or the decision-making process?

00:03:22 Tim

And or the process of interpreting how we think about it now.

00:03:26 Tim

That's a lot of questions all at once. [both laugh]

00:03:27 Marty

Those are always the best kind, like a politician. Oh, I can answer what I know that I want to answer or something, but…

00:03:40 Marty

I would say when I started as an interpreter, it was all about skill [Tim: hmm] and not anything about the Code of ethics except for confidentiality. [Tim: hmm] That was that was very important, even way back then. [Tim: mhmm]

00:03:59 Marty

Don't be sharing what you did with one job with another job and, and pretend not to know that deaf person when you show up at a public event and let them come up to you if they choose. But don't go over to them and say, “ohh, how's your tooth?” [Tim: yeah]

00:04:19 Marty

Because I just interpreted for them for the dentist, so, confidentiality was what ethics was. I would say back then.

00:04:29 Marty

And being professional, but that's not really ethics. [Tim: yeah] The professional in terms of dress and demeanor, manner [Tim: mhmm] and, and nowadays like you said, we seem to have this two categories, one related to skill, one related to ethics. [Tim: mhmm]

00:04:53 Marty

One thing I'll say is that in 1993, when I finished my doctoral studies, before that, my doctoral studies weren't going to be about interpreting skills. [Tim: hmm]

00:05:08 Marty

My original study was…

00:05:12 Marty

‘What are the soft skills that interpreters need to have?’ [Tim: mhmm] I spent a year trying to figure that question out. How do you measure that? And it was a failure. I just couldn't figure out how to measure it, and I wanted to…

00:05:32 Marty

…be able to teach it, to measure it, to pass it along, and that's when I changed over to skills. [Tim: mhmm]

00:05:40 Marty

And what makes a good interpreter, which was plenty hard, but at least it was measurable.

00:05:46 Tim

Yeah. So, what made it hard about trying to find it? Was it just you didn't know how to measure it, or people were saying, “I don't know what you mean by that?”

00:05:55 Marty

It was definitely the measuring of soft skills defining the soft skills.

00:06:02 Marty

How do you introduce yourself? [Tim: mhmm] Is it professional? Are you speaking like you belong here in a doctor's office or in a courtroom? How are you addressing the professionals? Are you calling them by their first name? Are you calling them Doctor so and so?

00:06:22 Marty

All of those things…[Tim: mhmm] and one thing in ASL, I'd be curious in other sign languages, in ASL…

00:06:31 Marty

…and in spoken English, the sign for “attitude” is not the same meaning exactly as the English word “attitude”. And I was really interested in the ASL meaning of attitude. So, when people say to me, you know, “Ohh you've got such a good attitude!” - deaf people. [Tim: mhmm]

00:06:57 Marty

“Wow, OK.”

00:06:59 Marty

And so, over the years, I do know well what that means, [Tim: mhmm] but to talk about it, to teach it, to measure it in other people very difficult. [Tim: mhmm]

00:07:16 Tim

So, what is attitude from the American Sign Language point of view?

00:07:20 Marty

Yeah. Good question. [Tim laughs] It encompasses like how you fit into the deaf community, how easy it is to work with you, how responsive you are as an interpreter. Are you willing to stay past the appointment a few minutes? [Tim: mhmm]

00:07:41 Marty

Are you an interpreter that, you know, shows up at 9:00 and leaves at 10:00, and boy don't stay till 10:05. “Gotta go”. And the deaf person has a question or maybe wants to know a little bit about you and, “Ohh no. Gotta go.”

00:08:01 Marty

So that's an attitude that's not a good attitude. [Tim: mhmm]

00:08:06 Marty

So that's a big part of it. [Tim: hmm]

00:08:09 Tim

Do you think that the deaf perspective of attitude has that influenced how we now discuss and teach ethics?

00:08:16 Marty

I'm not sure attitude gets in there.

00:08:20 Marty

I think how we talk about ethics is from a, a hearing standard of ethical behavior that would be consistent across professions… [Tim: mhmm]

00:08:35 Marty

Specific to different professions…

00:08:38 Marty

But I can't think of conversations around ethics that includes attitude. [Tim: Yeah]

00:08:46 Marty

So then attitude…

00:08:49 Marty

I would put over into the skills section. [Tim: hmm?!]

00:08:52 Marty

As opposed to the ethical section, if we're dividing things up, which is which I think you're very right, Tim, that we do divide up our work in conversation and in courses interpreting courses. We have ethic courses. We have English to ASL courses, and they overlap some. [Tim: yeah]

00:09:14 Marty

But just by stating those courses as ethics, English to ASL, we've made the determination of what's going on in that class. [Tim: yeah]

00:09:26 Tim

Has that distinction by creating courses that academic labeling of our skills have we now added layers of separation from the deaf community as a profession?

00:09:39 Marty

Yes, definitely. Definitely.

00:09:43 Tim

How do we change that?

00:09:45 Marty

Yes, we need more deaf people involved in interpreter education. We need more input from deaf people in interpreter education, and we need to have deaf people take interpreter education.

00:10:00 Marty

We need deaf people to become professional interpreters, which means skills and ethics. What is their role? Are they advocates? Are they interpreters? Is… Are they different from… is their role different from a hearing interpreter and what are those differences? Again, it goes back to measurement.

00:10:23 Tim

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

00:10:24 Marty

How do you measure? How do you identify and define what is a deaf interpreter’s role? [Tim: Yeah] I think in some cases we think a deaf interpreter's role is the same as a hearing interpreter’s role. [Tim: mhmm]

00:10:40 Marty

I would beg to differ, even if there's slight differences, there are differences. [Tim: mhmm]

00:10:46 Marty

And we should acknowledge that we should describe that we should work together [Tim: yeah] with deaf people and say, “OK, what do you think it should be?” Let's, let's write a book about deaf interpreting. [Tim: mhmm] Do we have some out there?

[SHORT TRANSITION MUSIC]

00:11:05 Tim

Our profession is unique in the interpreting field, I believe, because we are working with the Community where the interpreter is with them in intimate settings in their daily life, throughout their lives.

00:11:20 Tim

Whereas spoken language interpreters don't have as many opportunities as we do to connect with the community. So, my question is, do we assign language interpreters have to have that quote attitude in a different way than spoken language interpreters haven't would have an attitude? Or would they have an attitude involved in their communities?

00:11:44 Marty

[That’s] a great question.

00:11:47 Marty

In North America, my feeling is that, and I believe it's accurate, that the sign language interpreting community is far ahead of the spoken language interpreting community.

00:12:05 Marty

In that we have national certification, we have education programs for interpreters. Spoken language interpreters, if you're at the high level, we have training for that, for platform interpreting conferences, politicians, [Tim: mhmm] plenty of work for spoken language interpreting.

00:12:27 Marty

When you get to the courtrooms, spoken language interpreters in some areas have to be certified.

00:12:35 Marty

Others… areas they don't, and especially when you get to the small spoken language communities that you need an interpreter for. But you're right that interpreter may or may not be involved in the community. [Tim: mhmm] The deaf community within a community, so, a minority within a minority. [Tim: yeah] So that makes it different.

00:13:01 Marty

There's one example that always comes to mind when I talk about this in, in my own community here in Edmonton. A big difference between when I worked in Los Angeles and I worked here [Tim: mhmm] as an interpreter.

00:13:1 Marty

Ini Los Angeles, I had a wide variety of jobs.

00:13:22 Marty

And ethically speaking, I did not interpret for friends. [Tim: mhmm]

00:13:29 Marty

I did not interpret for people that I knew well. That was part of the rules. [Tim: mhmm] When I moved up to Edmonton... Well, I tried to implement those rules.

00:13:40 Marty

It's not possible.

00:13:42 Marty

Edmonton, when I moved here, wasn't even a million people yet.

00:13:45 Marty

And so, the deaf community, if I didn't work for people I knew, I wouldn't work for anybody as an interpreter. [both chuckle] So… So, that's a difference. And then another difference is, again, I'm working in the community where the interpreting community is thoroughly engaged with the deaf community, so we are there. [Tim: mhmm] When we have a deaf person who's very ill and going through a lot of treatment…

00:14:20 Marty

…significant treatment or dying over a period of time, [Tim: mhmm] interpreters band together. And there might be four of us who all take turns interpreting for this person. [Tim: mhmm] It's easier for the deaf person. It's easier for the interpreters because we get permission from the deaf person to say, …

00:14:46 Marty

…you know, “Can we talk with the other interpreters involved in this foursome and to pass on information?” that “Ohh now she's taking such and such. Then the doctor's gonna show up tomorrow. Can you be there?” And so, we arrange our schedules and everything. [Tim: mhmm] When I spoke about this with spoken language interpreters, they do it very differently. [Tim: hmm] They do not want the same interpreter because it's too emotional.

00:15:14 Marty

Which of course it is.

00:15:16 Marty

That's true. So, from the people I've spoken with…

00:15:20 Marty

They change out those interpreters regularly, so the spoken language individual who's not deaf gets a variety of interpreters. [Tim: hmm] And I'm not sure from the patient’s… In this case the patient’s perspective what that's like. But I do know from the deaf person's perspective much better for them from their perspective and from the interpreter’s perspective, [Tim: mhmm] but it's very wearing on the interpreters.

00:15:52 Marty

And then if you have a second deaf person who's doing it, hopefully you have a different group of interpreters who can handle that. [Tim: mhmm]

00:16:00 Tim

For the spoken language interpreters in that example, you were saying it was too emotional for the spoken language interpreters or for the patient?

00:16:08 Marty

For the spoken language interpreter coordinator, the coordinator has made decisions that were from a different perspective, saying, …

00:16:20 Marty

“We don't want our Korean interpreter, our five Korean interpreters, to be the only interpreters for this. We are going to have all twenty of our Korean interpreters interpret for this person.” [Tim: interesting]

00:16:36 Marty

Yeah. It's, it's. It was really, it was really surprising for me. It's like the research that goes back to this was a number of years ago, so things may have changed, but years ago there was some research done in the United States about legal interpreting.

00:16:56 Marty

And deaf people were asked, “Do you want an interpreter that knows you? Or do you want an interpreter that you don't know?” I think it was as high as 80, 85% preferred interpreters they know. [Tim: Hmm]

00:17:12 Marty

Which, living in Los Angeles, that would not happen at that time when I lived there, we would not interpret in court for someone we knew. [says melodramatically] It would be unethical! [Tim chuckles] But the deaf person… umm, And there was…

00:17:28 Marty

The reason it wasn't 100% is because the 15% or so said, “It depends what I'm charged with.” [Tim: Yeah] “If I'm charged with something embarrassing, I don't want somebody I know. But if it's for a ticket, divorce, child custody even...” [Tim: interesting]

00:17:51 Marty

I wonder what it, what the answers would be today.

00:17:54 Tim

Yeah, exactly.

00:17:55 Marty

And again, pending on the size of your community [Tim: yes] of interpreters in this community… umm…

00:18:04 Marty

Yes, you can have interpreters you don't know interpreting in court for you. I suppose we're big enough.

00:18:10 Tim

Yeah, there's many countries throughout Europe where, yeah, it's not, it's not big enough... [Marty: yeah]

00:18:15 Tim

‘the group of interpreters’, that is, yeah, [Marty: mhmm] everybody knows everybody. [Marty: yeah] It's a blessing and a curse.

00:18:22 Marty

Yes, definitely has its advantages.

[ROCK TRANSITION MUSIC STARTS]

00:18:26 Tim

Thank you to everyone who supports this podcast. Check out the links in the show notes to Buy Me A Coffee. That's right, Buy Me A Coffee because everyone needs a little high blood pressure. No, wait, that's no… [coughs] Thank you. Now let's go back.

[ROCK TRANSITION MUSIC ENDS]

00:18:42 Tim

What was your motivation to start your business interpreting consolidated?

00:18:48 Marty

That's a great question. [both laugh] I come from a family of business owners, [Tim: ahh] my father, my grandfather, my brother.

00:19:04 Marty

And I always wanted to have my own business.

00:19:08 Marty

As an interpreter, I had my own business. So then if you think about that, then I started in...uuh… ohh yeah, I started a long time ago [Tim laughs] with my own business and Interpreting Consolidated my business. “Consolidated” is a part of a family tradition. My father owned Consolidated Fuel and Heating Company. [Tim: mhmm] My brother owns Consolidated Landscaping and then I had to come up with something, so, Interpreting Consolidated. [Tim: ahh]

00:19:48 Marty

And when I finished my PhD, I finished my research, I had some really good data about what is a novice interpretation like and what is an expert interpretation like and identified all the skills and described them all. [Tim: mhmm] And then I wanted my… the important part of my dissertation…

00:20:14 Marty

I wanted that to get out to the field. My dissertation’s, maybe 300 pages long.

00:20:21 Marty

Nobody's going to read it, especially back in 1993. [Tim chuckles] Nobody's going to read it, though. I just wanted the part that was, I thought, would be helpful to the field. [Tim: mhmm] And I went around to different publishers. I walked into one place. Oh, he didn't laugh at me.

00:20:42 Marty

But when I left, I thought, “Oh my God, he must be laughing at me.” [Tim chuckling] Because he printed The Yellow Pages. [Tim laughing]

00:20:52 Marty

The Yellow Pages is a telephone directory of every person in the city, so he publishes that! [Tim laughing] We don't have the Yellow Pages anymore. [Tim: mhmm] But anyway, he did talk with me and he said publishing really is a matter of distribution.

00:21:14 Marty

If I'm the one with the connections, I should be the one distributing it. [Tim: hmm] Because he says that's why you have a publisher. They know where to distribute it, but I didn't want to self-publish. That's not very good. So, the University of Alberta was interested in it, but it would take them three years.

00:21:33 Marty

To get it published one year to have it reviewed, [Tim: mhmm] second year to find money and the third year to publish it. And I wasn't prepared to wait. [Tim: yeah]

00:21:47 Marty

So, that portion of the dissertation was my first book, the beginning of Interpreting Consolidated, and then I worked with deaf colleagues to create back then V- VHS tapes, which then became DVD's. [both laughing]

[SHORT TRANSITION MUSIC]

00:22:12 Tim

And so, Interpreting Consolidated started out as your publishing company as it were, but has it evolved or is it the same?

00:22:20 Marty

It's evolved it. I never expected. I don't know what I expected when I published the Interpretation Skills English to ASL.

00:22:31 Marty

A lot of people call it the blue book.

00:22:34 Marty

When I published that, I don't know what I expected. I did not expected to be selling at, what, 20 years later. [Tim: mhmm]

00:22:44 Marty

…and have a second edition out. And then I received a federal grant - postdoctoral fellowship to write the companion book Interpretation Skills, American Sign Language to English. [Tim: mhmm] So, then, now I have two books, and then it just evolved from there. That, gee, I want some ASL DVDs. [Tim: mhmm]

00:23:09 Marty

So, Angela Petrone Stratiy worked with me to create some marvelous DVD's of short, interesting vignettes of interesting facts.

00:23:22 Tim

Yeah. And so, people can use the books to help them analyze the interpretations that they do with the videos. Is that how it works?

00:23:31 Marty

Yes, they can. I always suggest first use the book to identify skills in native signers [Tim: OK] rather than going straight to an interpretation, even though that's what the book is titled. [Tim: yeah] In the book, it's mostly ASL skills because that's where the errors occur. [Tim: yeah]

00:23:58 Marty

If we can identify ASL skills from a native signer, then at least we know what we're looking for and what we're striving for as interpreters. [Tim: mhmm]

00:24:07 Marty

Umm, and then look at our own interpretations for those same skills, to see how we're employing them or not.

00:24:17 Marty

Or how they can be improved [Tim: mhmm] so that we're eloquent as interpreters, both going from English and going from ASL into English.

00:24:27 Tim

So, we don't want to reach expert, we want to reach level of eloquent interpreter.

00:24:32 Marty

There. Yes, that would be lovely. [Tim chuckles]

00:24:36 Marty

Every one of us should be there.

00:24:38 Marty

I'm still working on it.

00:24:40 Tim

That can be the next certification level, [Marty laughs] yes.

00:24:43 Tim

Eloquent interpreter. [laughing]

00:24:44 Marty

[humorously] Please, please don't we have so few certified interpreters in Canada and it's an expensive process for an organization to provide certification. Ohh it's such a mess!

00:25:00 Tim

Yeah. And there are some countries who would, would love to have anything that's called certification.

00:25:05 Marty

Yes. And I would encourage that and encourage the deaf people and interpreters to work together to make it happen.

[SHORT TRANSITION MUSIC]

[ROCK EXIT MUSIC STARTS]

00:25:19 Tim

Well, a lot happened in this episode, that's for sure. Some deep subjects that we only touched on, let me point out a few of them to remind us all to think about how we can improve and how we can discuss to make things better for our profession and for the communities we serve.

00:25:38 Tim

First, ethics versus skills, ethics with skills, skills within ethics… Is attitude a skill? From the ASL perspective it sounds like it is. How to interact with people in an appropriate way in the way that the ASL community deems that it's appropriate.

00:25:59 Tim

From our discussion, has our profession become more separating for our group by having labels for courses that separate ethics from the process, from the history, from the Deaf studies, labeling each of those courses make us think of them in a categorized way.

00:26:20 Tim

Rather than thinking of it as a whole, for those of us who are experienced, we can now see that as a student, it's more difficult to fathom that.

00:26:29 Tim

How do we change that? How do we bring the profession academically back to engage with the deaf community? Hmm. Those are questions we need to answer that we're working on now. From my perspective, I think of our profession as a service.

00:26:48 Tim

Having the right attitude serves the community well. Serving means what is the kindest way to interact? What is the most appropriate way to serve?

00:27:01 Tim

How do we bring that into the courses that we teach into the trainees without separating it? It's an interesting discussion. Let me know if you have the answers. I say again, we must reach over to our colleagues who work with spoken languages they have perspectives that can influence our own, perhaps enhance our profession and vice versa.

00:27:29 Tim

Speaking of Marty's research and her books, it's a way for us to remember that we must know how native deaf sign language users use their language. So, if we know how native deaf signers use their language, we will know how to analyze our work and improve our own interpretations.

00:27:52 Tim

And lastly, I would encourage all researchers out there to look at your own research and your results. How can your results help the interpreters of the world.

00:28:04 Tim

Find a way to share it with us in a meaningful way to enhance our passion for the profession.

00:28:13 Tim

Next week we start with Marty telling us how to start our own interpreting program. That and so much more in the next few weeks.

00:28:24 Tim

Until then, keep calm, keep eloquently interpreting. I'll see you next week. Take care now.

[MUSIC PLAYS FOR MOMENT THEN…]

00:28:39 Marty

So, I just couldn't figure out how to measure it.

00:28:43 Tim

So, I guess you can't use Charmin for the soft skills. [Marty bursts out laughing]

00:28:47 Tim

Sorry, I'll cut… I'll cut that out. [Tim joins her laughter]

00:28:51 Marty

Ohh, I think you should keep it.

00:28:53 Tim

Well, only, only… half the world will know what that means.

00:28:57 Marty

[speaks conspiratorially into the mic] It's all about toilet paper, group. [They continue to laugh]

[ROCK EXIT MUSIC ENDS AT 00:29:08]