IW 100: Your Turn: Q&A-USA The Sign Language Interpreting Cadence

The Rhythm of an Interpreter's Life

Let's dance! OK, maybe not.

Today we hear from a seasoned interpreter from the USA, Anne. She answers the same questions I put to the others in the last few episodes. Her answers discuss Name Signs, having a good place to safely discuss our challenges and learn from each other, and how language deprivation and the lack of incidental learning affects how we produce our interpretation and our decision-making process.

It is great to hear from you. Enjoy, relax, learn.

Transcript

IW 100: Your Turn: Q&A – USA – The Sign Language Interpreting Cadence

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[ROCK INTRO MUSIC STARTS]

00:00:02 Tim

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 Tim

Let's start talking... interpreting.

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00:00:34 Tim

And now the quote of the day by American turned Irish citizen, sci-fi and fantasy writer Anne McCaffrey.

00:00:45 Tim

“But I will say that living in Ireland has changed the cadence and fullness of speech since the Irish love words and use as many of them in a sentence as possible.”

00:00:58 Tim

Well, I don't know whether that's true or not, but being descended from Irish Americans, I know I speak a lot sometimes with a cadence that is full. Definitely. Just ask my wife.

00:01:13 Tim

In today's episode, we hear from Anne in the USA. She too answers the questions I posed the others in the last few episodes, and we hear some good insight about the cadence of life, the rhythm, the pace, the feeling that we have as life flows on.

00:01:34 Tim

She speaks to the topic of name signs, how working together and coming together is a good thing, and how equity is affecting our work. Hmm, things to think about.

00:01:48 Tim

But let's listen from Anne in her own words.

00:01:52 Tim

Let's get started.

[SHORT TRANSITION MUSIC]

00:01:58 Anne

Hey, Tim. Good morning, good evening. I just wanted to say hey and I wanted to answer these questions that you've got for me. I'm going to answer this first question. What's the biggest challenges to you when it comes to working as a sign language interpreter and why? Over the years there's been so many challenge, and I think one of my current day challenges has been…

00:02:18 Anne

Name signs, name signs, I work currently at a residential school for the Deaf and I'm actually on and off campus quite a bit, so I'm there just enough to be dangerous [chuckles] and not enough to really memorize all of the kids, especially as they go through their classes, and they move into different levels of grades and those kinds of things.

00:02:40 Anne

When I am on campus, I'm doing those events, those big events, homecoming, national honor society, big events with their names and their families there.

00:02:50 Anne

At the school they use name signs in their everyday lives and, and that's done normally in deaf culture. But normally you're around, you know, groups where you're familiar with the signs. And I do become familiar with the signs.

00:03:02 Anne

However, the students, they go through and they change grades and they get older and I'm older [chuckles lightly]. I, I see people and I know who they are. I may know their name sign. I may not know how to pronounce their name. I may know how to pronounce their name, but forget their name sign and uh, if there is a class that has all the first letter the same, it gets me. So, making sure that…

00:03:23 Anne

I use those name signs. You say their names… say them appropriately when we are at those events where family and friends are involved and, and you definitely don't want to misunderstand anything. The familiarity at the schools is so intense that it, it's very offensive if you don't know those things and you can get…

00:03:45 Anne

You know, they're, they're hurt if you don't know their names. And by no, no intention of my own, (I know them. I'm familiar with them.) but names for me are hard in, in the hearing world. I always have to kind of do a game to connect names. So for me it's name signs and getting those name signs in those important events.

00:04:05 Anne

Making sure I understand what's going on and uh, like any culture schools for the Deaf have their own culture outside of what happens across the, the state. So that's one of the biggest challenges for me and luckily, I've got interpreters there that know those signs and team.

00:04:22 Anne

And, and we work together on that. But I do a lot of, I have a lot of notes with names and name signs and trying to articulate those names correctly.

00:04:32 Tim

Anne brings up another point about name signs. Ever since I did the episode #85, there's been a lot of buzz about name signs, and Anne is giving us an example of when it's very hard to interpret name signs.

00:04:51 Tim

When you're within the community so deeply, such as a residential school for the Deaf, where they only use the name sign and you do not know who that name sign is referring to, that's one particular situation where it's difficult for us and getting clarification over and over and over again about all of the many name signs that they might be using in such a situation can be frustrating and a little bit nerve wracking.

00:05:23 Tim

But Anne gives us a wonderful way to work on it, to improve it, to help us in those situations. One she talked about taking many notes. So, I suggest once we do get clarification, “Ohh OK, this name sign is for this person” and actually take notes.

00:05:44 Tim

So, taking notes in such a way for that assignment for that area helps us remember so that if we are asked to come back to that situation, we have those notes to review.

00:05:58 Tim

Journaling in our profession, a daily diary of the gigs that we do, can help us with future gigs. Not to mention, it can also help us in many other ways to improve what we do.

00:06:13 Tim

But I think one of the important aspects of her method of working in these situations is by using her team. A wonderful team can collaborate when things like this are unclear, or when we just don't know.

00:06:30 Tim

Working with the team, discussing things like this in a situation helps us improve, the interpretation, helps us serve better. And it reduces our anxiety, our stress levels, which allows us to put that energy to the interpretation and we look a little more professional, which gives us less stress.

00:06:51 Tim

Which helps the team have less stress where they know that they can rely on you, and you can rely on them. Teaming is such a wonderful thing.

[ROCK TRANSITION MUSIC STARTS]

00:07:01 Tim

A big thank you to everyone who shares this podcast with a colleague and friend. If you want to support the show even more, check out the show notes for links to Buy Me A Coffee because it's very embarrassing to fall asleep during an interview. Thank you. Let's go back.

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00:07:18 Anne

Number two, what was one of the most memorable moments from your podcast?

00:07:23 Anne

And why? Oh, I've enjoyed your podcast for so many reasons. I, I love you’re working with interpreters all across the world. I learn that we are all the same…

00:07:36 Anne

And all completely different and depending on our schema and our upbringing, our backgrounds, our implicit bias, and all of these things, how we develop and our work changes and it's been nice to see that. All the people that you have interviewed and worked with, I think we all have anxiety at times. I think we all have great days. At times I think we all have all sorts of things we can give to what we do.

00:08:04 Anne

So, I, I enjoy your greeting because I just I, I know you from having worked with you many years ago. And so, I enjoy your introduction and, and just you creating a space that is comfortable for interpreters to come and talk has really meant a lot.

00:08:22 Anne

And I appreciate the continuation of that process. Working as a team has always been really important to me and when I first started interpreting it was, you know…

00:08:32 Anne

“Everybody kind of learn from themselves what's the sign? What's this? What's that?” And I love the collaboration that has come not only with you, but with lots of interpreters. They've been in the field a long time. So, I enjoy that.

00:08:43 Tim

It is such a joy to hear others feeling what I'm feeling about this podcast, knowing that the more we know about each other, the more we know about ourselves. The more we know about how the profession works as a large worldwide organism, how we all have the same challenges, the same thoughts, and yet we’re all different.

00:09:08 Tim

Even though we think and focus on the same things, we all have the different backgrounds, the different knowledge, the different skills, the different education, the different perspectives in many, many ways. But we're still the same.

00:09:24 Tim

An interpreter by any other name is still an interpreter.

00:09:29 Tim

Coming together in a space like this, recording our perspectives, our thoughts, our ideas, our tips, and our tricks can help each other feel safe and feel, “Yes, that's right, it confirms what I thought.” Or it helps me understand that there aren't easy answers.

00:09:50 Tim

But there is someone else working through the same things as I am, and eventually we might get that aha moment from another interpreter. And it's not about thinking the same way or being the same. It's about understanding all of the perspectives in learning from each other.

00:10:12 Tim

Even when we disagree, even when we have a different viewpoint. As an interpreter, we can see the other viewpoints, because that's just like our clients. They have different viewpoints than we do. They have different backgrounds, different aspects of life than we do. And we need to understand those.

00:10:32 Tim

At least enough to interpret to give the message as faithfully as we can from their intention and perspective.

[SHORT TRANSITION MUSIC]

00:10:47 Anne

What is one perspective of yours that has changed since you first started interpreting and why?

00:10:53 Anne

So, this is one I use a lot as examples when I'm working with new interpreters that when I first became an interpreter back in the 90s, late 90s.

00:11:04 Anne

Equity versus equality. Equality was, was the big thing. Equity was not quite developed yet. Of course, I was in my early 20s and I hadn't developed much as a human, and I was considering…

00:11:18 Anne

Early on, I wanted I see deaf individuals just like I see hearing individuals in the sense that I did not understand the depth of language deprivation. I did not understand the depth of the inequity, not only with, with deaf individuals, but just in the world.

00:11:36 Anne

And being a white Caucasian female born in the United States, and a middle-class family, I did not get all that. So, equity versus equality was very different for me. So, I was big into giving the message, nothing more, nothing less, uh, very early in my career. Luckily, I hit many walls very quickly and found that that was not how we need to work as interpreters.

00:12:04 Anne

And that we needed to make the implied message, the, you know, the implicit explicit trying to clarify and really get that in my bones to understand that type of, not lack of understanding …never being exposed in the first place, never having that opportunity to learn those things in the first place.

00:12:29 Anne

And having the privilege of hearing, so to speak, that the privilege of knowledge that you get with residual learning through auditory means and so as I've grown as an interpreter, one of the things I really look around to see what are the sounds that are happening around me that indicate, a star spangled banner, or graduation is happening, or someone is being arrested, the cadence of things.

00:12:55 Anne

That was one of my earliest things, equality versus equity. And equity is very, very different than equality, and that is something I've learned over the years and I only work harder to develop that and make sure individually with whenever I'm working with that, I'm able to create equity in my work.

00:13:16 Anne

OK, hugs and love to your beautiful wife and daughter. And I will talk to you later. Take care.

[ROCK TRANSITION MUSIC STARTS]

00:13:24 Tim

Thank you to all the hundreds of people following this podcast. If you want to hear from interpreters around the world and get the latest episodes, follow the podcast in your app. Just check out some of the links in the show notes to help you with that. Thank you. Now let's go back.

[ROCK TRANSITION MUSIC ENDS]

00:13:41 Tim

In the Western world, the debate about equity and equality is still going on. It's understood and misunderstood, but that's not the topic today.

00:13:53 Tim

Anne brings us a great point, a point about language deprivation, and a lack of knowledge, not necessarily a lack, but never… having… been… exposed… to this knowledge.

00:14:10 Tim

This takes us back to one of my interviewees, Amareshm the CODA interpreter from India, where he talked about his own lack of incidental learning as a child. Most of us who are hearing, we get information every day from the radio, from background noise.

00:14:31 Tim

When we're in a restaurant, we can hear others talking and we get little snippets, little pieces of conversation information, people's attitudes, it changes the atmosphere of the restaurant for us. In social settings, in school settings, in the car on the radio, all of this auditory information gives us…

00:14:53 Tim

…more knowledge, more information to piece together to make a perspective, to create our view of the world. And those little pieces of information we use when we're interpreting, because when someone mentions something that we've heard before, we're like, “Ohh, I understand what they mean.”

00:15:14 Tim

Or “I understand the perspective they're coming from because I heard this five years ago on the radio” or “in a restaurant”, all of that knowledge builds on itself and connects in different ways that we don't even think about.

00:15:29 Tim

And those that we serve in the deaf community do not have this corpus of information. This collection of pieces of information that tie together somehow, eventually in our experiences.

00:15:45 Tim

That's why we sometimes add information or change our interpretation to bring the understanding a little bit closer to that of someone who has that experiential incidental knowledge.

00:16:03 Tim

That was a very complicated way of saying our deaf clients don't always understand what is being said because they don't have the background for it. That background knowledge, they haven't been exposed to what we know.

00:16:19 Tim

So, we change our interpretation or we add something to the interpretation to make it clearer, just like we do when we get a metaphor or an idiom or a hearing joke.

00:16:32 Tim

We add some information to make it clear and in the same way there are those rare occasions when we add something about, hmm, what does a name sign mean? Or the fact that “no sign language is not universal”…

00:16:49 Tim

…for those hearing people that lack that knowledge, who have not been exposed to the information we know about deaf culture, language. Unfortunately, most people are at the age or the developmental maturity of a younger Anne.

00:17:09 Tim

They don't understand or realize that some of the communities we serve have a lack of the incidental learning.

00:17:19 Tim

And unfortunately, that skews their viewpoint about many things that concern the deaf community and the interpreting community.

00:17:30 Tim

For example, they do not see the need for interpreting services everywhere for everything. They do not see the need to change laws that support the deaf community that support the interpreting profession. When they debate things in the legislatures around the world they miss out on the fact of incidental learning and how that and a lack of that has imbalanced access for the deaf community.

00:18:03 Tim

When we talk about awareness of the Deaf Community, awareness of sign language, awareness of interpreting, that's what we're talking about. People don't get it because they don't have this understanding of all of the deprivation that has occurred over the years.

00:18:20 Tim

All of the medical viewpoints are very similar to this. They don't realize, they're not aware of what has happened to the deaf community, or what is happening right now, I should say.

00:18:38 Tim

But as interpreters like Anne said, we need to realize that this is a thing, that this is true. Language deprivation, as Marty Taylor in her interview, mentioned, many of the younger deaf are not fluent in their sign language because of language deprivation.

00:18:59 Tim

The influences are widespread.

00:19:02 Tim

We merely need to acknowledge as interpreters why we do certain things, why we get anxious about, “uhhmm, should I add some information here?” “Ohh this isn't clear. Is it my responsibility to clear this up?” Sometimes we need to think, ‘why am I thinking this? Why am I even wanting to add something?’

00:19:23 Tim

Is it because I know there is language deprivation here or a lack of exposure to this basic knowledge that most hearing people know?

00:19:36 Tim

So, try not to stress over it, just do what's right and let the Community decide what's next.

[SHORT TRANSITION MUSIC]

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00:19:50 Tim

Well, I hope you've enjoyed the last few episodes where you had your turn to answer some questions, to give me some feedback, to give your ideas to everyone else, your thoughts in this meaningful dialogue that we're having. If you'd like to have more of these let me know. Send me a voicemail or you can send me an e-mail and I can read it for you.

00:20:12 Tim

Let's keep the conversation going. Anne mentioned one phrase which I thought was beautiful. The “cadence of things”, the pace of life, the way things feel. As interpreters, we know it's not just about the language. We also know that it's about the feeling that we have.

00:20:32 Tim

Feeling the intention of what is said, what is shown, we have that skill, and it grows within us, the more experienced we become as an interpreter. All of those schemas, all of that incidental learning, helps us improve what we do and, and serve better.

00:20:51 Tim

I remember the time when I had that “aha moment” that Anne was talking about maturing as an interpreter. I was still a student of interpreting American Sign Language/English interpreting. I was standing outside with another student and our ASL teacher and they were arguing about this very topic.

00:21:18 Tim

Where the teacher was saying, “But I don't know that because I've never heard that.” And this other student said, “Well, but it's everywhere you can, you you've had the opportunity to do blah, blah, blah blah blah.”

00:21:30 Tim

And it was that moment when I said, “Yes, but the teacher has not had that opportunity. Just like right now in this very moment we, you and I, as hearing people we know, we have this information that there is a plane overhead right now. It's getting louder. That's why I'm speaking louder. And you know, I'm speaking louder because you also hear it, but we don't acknowledge the fact that there is a plane there.”

00:22:01 Tim

“We just know it's there; you know that I'm not raising my voice because I'm mad at you. I'm raising the volume of my voice because I have to in this environment. The teacher here has no idea that we are doing any of this.”

00:22:17 Tim

“That is incidental learning. That's not there even right now at this moment.” And as I said that (we were all signing, of course), the teacher looked up and said, “Yes, exactly that!” I knew I was getting it.

00:22:36 Tim

I realized I knew whether it was being exposed to the deaf community constantly.

00:22:43 Tim

Or because I was an older student and had maturity already. Have you had those aha moments? Let those influence your interpreting in a good way, in a positive way, in a serving way. So, until next time, keep calm.

00:23:02 Tim

Keep the cadence of interpreting going. I'll see you next week. Take care now.

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