IW 115: InterpreTips: Does Sign Language Interpreting Change Who We Are?

Are you com-fluent-able with your working languages? Inquiring interpreters want to know.

Today's episode is all about the impact of sign language interpreting on our personalities, behaviors, and mindset. Understanding the intent, goals, and dynamic discourses that our clients have can get under our skin. This impact can actually wear on our mental health and cause changes in our behavior and possibly influence how people perceive us.

IW Community Click to join the waiting list now.
A place to meet regularly to laugh, learn, and lean on each other.

You get:

• 10-50% OFF of workshops, seminars. A great way to earn CEUs, CPD, and professional development hours.
• Online meetings to expand on the IW podcast episodes. Meet online with interviewees.
• And more.

Transcript

IW 115: InterpreTips: Does Sign Language Interpreting Change Who We Are?

Support the Podcast!

[ROCK INTRO MUSIC STARTS]

00:00:02 ONLY TIM IS SPEAKING IN THIS EPISODE

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 to interpretersworkshop.com.

00:00:28 

Let's start talking... interpreting.

[ROCK INTRO MUSIC ENDS]

00:00:35

And now the quote of the day by Glennon Doyle, American author.

00:00:41

“I surrendered myself to the cages of others, expectations, cultural mandates, and institutional allegiances until I buried who I was in order to become what I should be. I lost myself when I learned how to please.”

00:01:01

Today we talk about sign language interpreters and how we adapt ourselves to the situation to the cultural norms of others, the language use of others, and surrendering ourselves to the institutional norms of the professional sign language interpreting community.

00:01:24

Who are we? Are we just a collective of the same sign language interpreter, or are we individuals? How do we determine that and how should we look at that and use that knowledge to improve ourselves and the profession? Hmm. Sounds like a dreary negative episode, doesn't it?

00:01:45

So, let's turn that negativity into positivity. Get on your headbands for the sweating that we're about to do as we're jumping for joy to talk about the interpreting profession and who we are. Let's get started.

[SHORT TRANSITION MUSIC]

00:02:06

A lot of thoughts have been going through my head of late thinking about all of the interviews I've had, in particular Robin K Dean and recently Julia Cramer and many others have said similar things, and I think it's time for us to start discussing it and thinking about it from different perspective.

00:02:26

Robin mentioned a humorous story about how her mother realized that Robin wasn't talking as much as she used to. Robin talked all the time constantly, and one day her mother realized that Robin wasn't talking that much. She was sitting there quietly, as though her personality had changed.

00:02:47

And Robin was like, “Well, it's probably because I've been listening to other people talk all day long and I just need quiet.” And that made me start to think how my personality has changed, how my behavior has changed.

00:03:00

I used to be very extroverted, very open, kind of the life of the conversation, life of the party, silly jokes, constantly telling stories. My father has a story about me. When I was younger where he said the only time, I stopped talking was when I was eating watermelon or the one time when we were driving home on a long trip and he said, “Tim, I'll pay you $1.00 if you don't say another word until we get home.”

00:03:36

And I actually did that, he said, not until we drove into the driveway at the house and stopped the car. The first thing I said was, “OK, where's my dollar?” Hmm. So, I could control it with the right incentive. And I've noticed lately, well, in the many years that I've lived in the Czech Republic, some Czechs consider me to be introverted because I don't talk as much. I don't interact as much, or when I do it's very formulated, regulated. And my wife mentioned it's mainly because of the language, the language barrier not being able to say exactly what I want because my fluency in Czech is not at the same level as my fluency in English, right?

00:04:27

So, I am comfortable in my English fluency, and therefore can quickly interact in that extroverted way, whereas my comfort level of fluency in Czech is much lower, and so I don't interact as quickly or as much as I normally would.

00:04:47

So, my character changes because of my... Now here's a new word that I just made-up. “Com-fluent-able” feeling. Whether or not I am com-fluent-able in that language.

00:05:01

That's comfortable and fluency connected. Being fluent and comfortable, fluently comfortable or com-fluent-able in that language. Yes, that's my word. Connecting my com-fluent-able experience with Czech and how we are as interpreters, have you noticed that you speak less?

00:05:27

That you've changed your personality. I know that we have to put on a robe of professionalism that contrasting solid color of professional interpreter cloak or hoodie and that has to show us, show the world that we are a professional interpreter.

00:05:46

We are impartial and therefore we don't interact, and we don't give our opinions as much. We don't give our advice, we don't laugh and involve ourselves as much as we normally would, especially when we start interpreting when we begin our interpreting journey. The more experienced we are, the longer we serve in this profession, the more possibilities we have to show our personality to be comfortable with showing who we are.

[SHORT TRANSITION MUSIC]

00:06:22

Julia Kramer as a trainer for sign language interpreters she loved and enjoyed the different personalities, the different characters that she met in her students, and I think it's wonderful to see the diversity of personalities that can become interpreters.

00:06:41

Sign language interpreters bringing themselves into the interpretation having that diversity allows us to find an interpreter that matches the client and the client’s needs the language needs the background, the cultural needs, but then we take those different personalities, and we cloak them with the professionalism, the impartial cloak of professionalism, that kind of makes us all look the same.

00:07:07

We have that “interpreter” look. Deaf people can usually tell, “Ohh, that must be the interpreter” just by the way we walk into the room. The way we present ourselves to the crowd.

00:07:22

So, it means we're suppressing ourselves, we're suppressing our own personality to show that we are an impartial person in this event, that we are professional and we're here to do a job to take on the cultural norms of this group and this group, the language norms of this group and this group rather than expressing who we are in that moment.

00:07:46

It’s not perfect, and it's not final, but it is something that affects us to the point where sometimes we just need quiet, like Robin Dean said.

00:07:59

Sometimes we suddenly change how we behave based on how we behave in the profession. Julia took this a step further. She mentioned how empathy is important for sign language interpreters to be able to understand and feel the intentions, the goals of each of the clients so that we can better serve them.

00:08:23

However, we then take on those emotions, those perspectives, all of those things we bring into ourselves. We cloak ourselves with those as well, so that we can feel the meaning and construct the meaning from what we see from what we hear and some of that stays on us.

00:08:45

Some of that stays with us, inside us and that's why we talk about self-care. That's why we talk about taking care of ourselves and talking to a colleague, a therapist, because it gets under our skin, as Julia said.

00:09:03

The fact that we use a visual mode of communicating in sign language, just the fact that we have eye-to-eye contact with our clients as they are expressing sometimes very emotional moments, very emotional stories, very tense stories, whatever it is, we have that eye-to-eye contact. We're looking into what they're feeling. We're becoming intimate with them just in the communication itself.

00:09:36

We're having to feel it in the same way they feel it, so that we construct the visual language and the verbal language in the same way. That's putting on a lot of character from the clients that we see. And sometimes we do that two or three times a day with different clients in the same day.

00:09:58

That has to change us. That has to evolve, somehow, our thinking, our behavior, our attitude, and our perspective on the world.

[ROCK TRANSITION MUSIC STARTS]

00:10:10

Hey, if you feel like talking now, why not tell a friend about the podcast? That's right. Share the podcast with a colleague or friend and spread the passion of our sign language interpreting profession. Thank you. Now let's go back.

[ROCK TRANSITION MUSIC ENDS]

00:10:26

So, if our perspective is changing, if our behavior is changing, is it a good thing or is it a bad thing? Does it help our overall professionalism? Does it help our interpretation, our practice?

00:10:42

How do we get rid of that? How do we find ourselves again? When working through self-care, as we become more experienced as a sign language interpreter, we learn how to get rid of some of this suppressed characterization that we have been bringing into ourselves.

00:11:03

We suppress our own behavior, our own perspectives, beliefs. We suppress our language use, and we have to think: How do I bring that back? How do I get rid of the cultural norms that I am bringing in?

00:11:23

How do I get rid of the language use that I have brought in the perspectives I brought in, the emotions that I brought in? How do I get rid of those and find me again? The more experienced we are, the more we learn how to take care of ourselves to be comfortable with switching between professional and normal me, the professional self, the normal self.

00:11:50

We learn how to switch it on and off like Sharon Neuman Solow said we do it every day. It gets easier every year. We may be the sister, we may be the brother, then we are the interpreter. We may be the friend. We may be a colleague, and then we're the interpreter. We switch back and forth regularly and we learn how to do that overtime. It's not that hard.

00:12:18

But perhaps early on in our career, when we see interpreters having burnout, being overwhelmed, not understanding how to do this, or getting upset about this or that, it's because they're not used to switching so much, taking on so much into themselves and not realizing that they need to release that, that this is not real. It's not them. When we realize that it gets easier and easier.

00:12:49

When we realize that we are not that person that just said all of that, “I am not that person that's in that emotional state. It is not me.” I need to flush that out using the metaphor of Sharon Neuman Solow flushing it away, getting rid of that. It is not me. I did not do that. This did not happen to me.

00:13:09

It is someone else, even though I am taking on professionally taking those emotions on, taking those, professionally taking on what they're saying and how they're feeling, I need to make sure that I get rid of those after I have used those for their purpose.

00:13:27

Self-care means finding yourself. Don't lose yourself. Don't replace yourself. Yes, over time we will evolve into a better you, a different you, a person who has more perspectives, more understanding, more schemata…

00:13:48

In order to do the job better and better, but it can't change who you are at your core. We need to find ourself. Self-care does not mean just taking care of yourself. It means also finding yourself remembering who you are and developing that.

00:14:08

You have to have the strong core foundation of yourself before you can play with all of the other emotions that are out there that we have to take on temporarily, momentarily, to do the job. 

00:14:23

There must always be a barrier that can bend and flex, but never break, never completely go away because the core is what is in control. Your core values, your core ethics, your civility, your needs, all of those must stay. Keep your personality. When the curtain opens, you're now that character.

00:14:49

But the puppet master is your core. The director must be in charge.

00:14:55

And then you can actually bring yourself out. In those moments when you first walk into a situation and they recognize, “Ohh, that must be the interpreter.” You can still interact as yourself, showing who you are, but keeping the full you curbed, in check, to the extent that you are still professional.

00:15:16

So, while we may be pleasing others, accepting what they need at that moment, we are not becoming them. We are not always agreeing with them. We need to remember we are who we are. We're not there to be changed by their arguments, by their perspectives.

00:15:37

We need to keep our core and be selfish with who you are.

00:15:43

And over time, we will change. We all do. We need the stability to keep the professionalism going.

[SHORT TRANSITION MUSIC]

[ROCK EXIT MUSIC STARTS]

00:15:55

Well, this has been a very deep, thoughtful, serious discussion, and I normally say, let's not take ourselves so seriously, and that's probably part of my personality. We don't need to take it so seriously. Interpreting is not always such an emotional roller coaster.

00:16:16

Most of the time we come in, we interpret what they say, and we're done. It's fairly simple. They tell a story; we tell the story in a different language.

00:16:27

It's not about a technical grind. It's fairly easy to comprehend what we do if we just… keep calm, keep interpreting through ourselves.

00:16:44

I'll see you next week. Take care now.

[ROCK EXIT MUSIC ENDS AT 00:17:23]