IW 148: Interview Paul Michaels Part 2: Male Interpreters-Far Removed-Remotely Close

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Dr Paul Michaels gives us all a reminder how important it is to have support in our sign language interpreting field, and it doesn't matter if you're in the same local community or online. We also delve deep into his PhD thesis which is quite fascinating for this male interpreter.

Stay tuned for more wonderful words from Paul next week.

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Transcript

IW 148: Interview Paul Michaels Part 2: Male Interpreters-Far Removed-Remotely Close

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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 to interpretersworkshop.com.

00:00:28 Tim

Let's start talking... interpreting.

[ROCK INTRO MUSIC ENDS]

00:00:34 Tim

And now the quote of the day by Irish writer Oscar Wilde.

00:00:41 Tim

“Public opinion… an attempt to organize the ignorance of the community and to elevate it to the dignity of physical force.”

00:00:51 Tim

So many things in that quote, but let's apply it to today's episode. Paul Michaels and I discuss how a public perception affects our profession. Paul also tells us more about working as an interpreter and how he was surprised when he compared working remotely where he is now to his working in the community back home in the UK, but we really dive deep this episode into his research.

00:01:23 Tim

What is the research? I'll let him tell you that. But it will make you think. So, let's get started.

[SHORT TRANSITION MUSIC]

00:01:34 Tim

You started your career working as an interpreter in the community, and now you're shifting more to online. How do you handle your, your self-care? How has that changed? How do you come back down to being prepared for the next job?

00:01:49 Paul

So, I have regular professional supervision, [Tim: Mm-hmm] both for my interpreting work and for my supervision practice. I actually have two different supervisors [Tim: Mm-hmm] and one of them is a - an interpreter and one of them is a psychotherapist.

00:02:11 Paul

So…

00:02:13 Paul

I meet them regularly, so I'm able to discuss any issues, dilemmas that I might have had whilst working.

00:02:21 Paul

And that's really a very good way for me to be able to find that relief.

00:02:27 Paul

I think it's quite difficult when you have a partner who, you know, one might expect you to offload to them and you know, or the woes and the troubles of the day.

00:02:44 Paul

But actually, I realized that “evening times” are important, you know not to, to necessarily dwell on something too much or for it to affect personal time and personal space. [Tim: Mm-hmm]

00:02:57 Paul

And so, I tried to kind of compartmentalize my discussions of issues and dilemmas, but I find that the, the best way. I also have a really good network of interpreter friends who I am able to, you know, run past stuff if there's something that’s bugging me a little bit that, that I feel like I need to have a chat about before my next supervision session.

00:03:24 Tim

Yeah.

00:03:25 Paul

So, I've got that network and I, and I, and I use it. You know the... I respect their feedback and their comments, and I respect their honesty with me because we've known each other for a long time. So, I feel very comfortable in talking about that. But also, when I'm working with the, VRS, VRI company that I’m working with, we have a WhatsApp group whilst on shift.

00:03:51 Paul

So, that at any time, we can talk to a shift lead if anything happens within a call, we can talk to them. We can, you know, just come offline and have a chat with them face to or, you know face to face, as in virtually on screen.

00:04:04 Tim

Yeah.

00:04:04 Paul

Or just via WhatsApp messages for example. So…

00:04:08 Paul

That's really good to have that support network, which you don't actually get when you're out face to face, working in the community. So, I feel as though strangely, even though I am so remote and so far from all of my colleagues, I feel a lot closer to them because of technology and you know.

00:04:27 Paul

That wouldn't have happened in, you know, certainly when I started working as an interpreter [Tim: Mm-hmm] and I don't think it happens when we're out working in the community. I think we are very much left on our own to deal with those things. But virtually, I've got a great network that I can draw upon and I hope that I would be that kind of support to them as well. [Tim: Mm-hmm]

00:04:49 Tim

That's eye opening. I think most people would think that we don't have the connection when we're just online all the time because we're sitting at home alone or what have you. But that's nice. That's really nice.

00:04:59 Paul

It really is, and I think it's key that when you are alone and you are dealing with situations that could be slightly disturbing, that there is that, that network.

00:05:11 Paul

So, I encourage, interpreters to engage with professional supervision and I encourage them to build a network and you know, trainees that I meet and even people who have been in the profession for a long time, continually building those networks of trusted colleagues is really important, I think. [Tim: yeah]

[SHORT TRANSITION MUSIC]

00:05:37 Tim

I remember several years ago us having a conversation very relaxed, talking about why…

00:05:45 Tim

Well, I don't want to give away the surprise. [Paul chuckling] I'll let you say that we were talking quite a bit about the structure or the makeup of population of interpreters and…

00:05:57 Tim

We just had so many questions about “why”. And that's when you told me you wanted to do some research on this particular subject, and I know it changed over time. But give us an introduction to that and how you kind of focused the question.

00:06:14 Paul

Hmm. So, what I was interested in was… men who become interpreters. [Tim: Mm-hmm]

00:06:25 Paul

So, as I kind of got into interpreting… Well, even before you know my level one or my level two classes, I realized that that me and one or two others were the only men within the class.

00:06:36 Paul

And at that stage, I'm not sure that I kind of really appreciated what was going on at that moment in time with the association of sign language and women. [Tim: right]

00:06:50 Paul

And so, I, I didn't really question it. But then of course, as I started to work as an interpreter, I realized that pretty much all of my co-interpreters, all of the interpreters that I met were, were women.

00:07:03 Paul

And I then started to think, well, you know, why is that? What, what's going on? Why is it a predominantly female profession?

00:07:11 Paul

So, my research was originally going to look at why sign language interpreting was predominantly female and gay male in its makeup of workforce.

00:07:31 Paul

So, I then started to look at the list of openly gay male interpreters that I knew.

00:07:40 Paul

And then I started to look at my list of openly straight male interpreters that I knew [both chuckling] which far outweighed the list of gay male interpreters that I knew, and I thought, well, hang on a second. I can't say that it's predominantly female and gay male. [Tim: Mm-hmm]

00:07:56 Paul

So, I changed it slightly and looked at the motivations and experiences of men working as British sign language interpreters in the UK.

00:08:08 Paul

And at the beginning of my title I say breaking the man code [Tim: Mm-hmm] because men are supposed to behave in a particular way.

00:08:17 Paul

I'm not sure if you'd realise that society says this about men. [Tim chuckling]

00:08:22 Paul

So, so, whilst I was doing my research and actually it, it really came out in, in my examination of my thesis.

00:08:34 Paul

When my examiners were kind of like, “You know what? You've got something going on here within your thesis and you really need to pull that out a little bit more.” which was…

00:08:44 Paul

You know, male interpreters, male British Sign language interpreters (I'm talking context here) [Tim: Mm-hmm] do not generally conform to the stereotypical alpha male that's expected of men in the workplace, and so I feel that generally male interpreters are not trying to be alpha male. There are some, of course, and and I'm sure that many of the…

00:09:16 Paul

…the female interpreters that are listening to this would be able to name a few and, [Tim chuckling] but I would say in general…

00:09:25 Paul

Male interpreters just fit in with working in a predominantly female profession quite well. [Tim: Mm-hmm]

00:09:31 Paul

And so, the kind of the man code or the “bro code” as it's sometimes called does not seem to happen with a lot of interpreters, and so I wanted to explore that. So, my research was the first empirical study, in depth empirical study, of their motivation, men's motivation to become an interpreter, and their experiences of working.

00:09:57 Paul

And really what I wanted to find out was how were men first exposed to sign language, which then led them to pursue their career, or at least trained to become an interpreter? [Tim: Mm-hmm] And then what is their experience and comparing that to other predominantly female professions such as nursing or primary teaching, [Tim: Mm-hmm] allied health profession. 

00:10:23 Paul

Now a lot of these professions refer to themselves as female dominated professions, but I like to refer to it as predominantly female because in the past although the makeup of numbers of interpreters has been female, there has often been men who have dominated the associations and maybe research and sort of led the way, maybe. And I think that now that's changing a lot. There's a lot more female interpreters who are leading our profession.

00:11:05 Paul

So, it may change in the future to become a female dominated profession [Tim: Mm-hmm] and I believe it should be, and would also consider in equality. [Tim: Mm-hmm]

00:11:19 Paul

But...

00:11:20 Paul

Looking at those experiences and seeing how similar they are to other predominantly female professions, or how different they are, and it was, it was fascinating. I really enjoyed the research I did it part time.

00:11:35 Paul

I spoke to many male interpreters and really got a lot of data that I was able to work with far too much [Tim chuckling] and to put into one PhD thesis and I mean just so much data, so many rich experiences were shared with me.

00:11:53 Tim

Yeah.

00:11:54 Tim

Talking about the dominance, I might clarify that. Do you mean as even though they are predominantly female, these professions, do you mean the males still had more of an authority role or a higher status of power in these professions? And is that the same as the interpreting profession in UK?

00:12:14 Paul

So, you're right in the respect of, you know, particularly within the medical profession, for example, you will have you if you, know if you see directors of, of nursing, directors of certain departments. Often, they're men. There is a big difference with sign language interpreting in that within the UK, majority of the workforce is freelance. So, we don't necessarily have that structure to climb that ladder, to climb, [Tim: yeah] to become, you know, head of whatever.

00:12:51 Paul

However, research does show that men will take on positions of maybe more high-profile jobs. [Tim: Mm-hmm]

00:13:04 Paul

And they will do you know more of the TV work.

00:13:09 Paul

Because they're not getting criticized, female interpreters will be criticized for their clothes or their hair. [Tim: hmm] Men don't get that kind of criticism, so. So therefore, why would a woman put themselves in front of that. And it's terrible. It's, it is disgusting. [Tim: yeah] And it's, and of course it's not other interpreters that are saying this, it's members of the public who see…

00:13:33 Tim

Really?

00:13:34 Paul

…female interpreter on TV. Absolutely! So, throughout the COVID pandemic when Scotland was having interpreters on screen regularly, daily for the briefings… [Tim: Mm-hmm]

00:13:49 Paul

…on Twitter the, the interpreters were being criticized for the way they looked.

00:13:55 Paul

…by random people you know, within the public domain. [Tim: yeah]

00:13:59 Paul

I mean it's…

00:13:59 Paul

It's totally unacceptable. Whereas you know, they wouldn't criticise a male interpreter for that and it's just, that's just wrong. It's just not fair. It's not right. [Tim: yeah] It happens.

00:14:10 Paul

And so a lot of female interpreters won't put themselves in those high profile positions because of the criticism that they'll get.

00:14:21 Tim

Yeah.

00:14:22 Paul

But equally…

00:14:24 Paul

And absolutely, they're, they're more than capable of doing those jobs, but the men tend to be a little more risk averse. And they'll say, well, I'll give it a go. You know, I haven't done that domain before. I haven't done that conference before, but I'll do it. I'll have a go, whereas female interpreters tend to be a little bit more cautious.

00:14:47 Paul

And will want to have more experience and want that validation that they can do it, whereas some men will not necessarily seek that validation.

00:14:58 Paul

So, the mentality can be quite different of… between men and women on how they approach accepting a job. [Tim: yeah]

00:15:06 Paul

So therefore, it seems that men will take on the higher status or more visibly profile jobs because they will have a go and, and women won't necessarily do that. [Tim: yeah]

[ROCK TRANSITION MUSIC STARTS]

00:15:24 Tim

Are you enjoying this free historical cultural, thought provoking, interpreting podcast? Great! Support the show, and the passion of our profession. Click on the links in the show notes and Buy Me A Coffee. Thank you. Now let's go back.

[ROCK TRANSITION MUSIC ENDS]

00:15:41 Tim

So back to the initial question then. Why are men motivated to be in the profession?

00:15:47 Paul

Well that's, that is a good question. And I found that men were sort of categorized into three different areas for their initial exposure [Tim: Mm-hmm] in sign language.

00:16:01 Tim

OK.

00:16:01 Paul

And so, the first was sort of personal contacts. [Tim: Mm-hmm] So, it was with either a deaf parent, a deaf family member, a deaf friend or a hearing family member and friend, who was connected to deaf people. So, there was that sort of family network.

00:16:25 Tim

Right.

00:16:25 Paul

There was either an event or an activity that was happening, so maybe through a church network or through work, or volunteering, a hobby or a course so they met a deaf person in that way and realised that sign language was an option. [Tim: Mm-hmm]

00:16:44 Paul

It could be a random meeting with a deaf person. [Tim: Ah]

00:16:49 Paul

And then there was a third category of direct observation. So, they saw interpreters working, or they saw sign language happening. So that could be, for example, at an event it could be on TV, they see an interpreter, or it could be, you know, one of our research participants was at a nightclub saw a group of deaf people using sign language and thought, “Wow, that's great. I'm going to go and learn sign language.”

00:17:14 Paul

So that was kind of like observing sign language. [Tim: Yeah] And so, from that, I was able to look at developing a typology and I've pulled that introducers, influencers, and attractors. That's how they were initially exposed to sign language.

00:17:33 Paul

But then of course, you move on a level to what prompts them to then become an interpreter, and there were two main motivations, so intrinsic and extrinsic.

00:17:47 Paul

So, intrinsically people wanted to, you know, provide better access to information for deaf people, because they have maybe seen that access to information was limited, so they wanted to change that. [Tim: Mm-hmm]

00:18:06 Paul

They wanted advancement for deaf people. They wanted to empower deaf people. They wanted social justice or you know, to improve language skills so they could develop that access for the deaf community.

00:18:23 Paul

And also, extrinsically so for example, career development people wanted to…

00:18:32 Paul

Maybe they were in a career, and they didn't see it going anywhere and they wanted to change. So, they realized that sign language interpreting was a route that they could go down or they wanted to develop their skills. So maybe they were working as a communication support worker and thought actually now I really want to take this further. So, I want to train to become an interpreter.

00:18:54 Paul

And also, kind of the flexibility in the variety of work.

00:18:58 Paul

Men saw that as an advantage to them [Tim: Mm-hmm] and a benefit to being able to work in the career, so it was flexible, particularly when wanting to have more time with children at home. So, they were able to be more flexible with their working day and the amount of work that they took on.

00:19:18 Paul

And also sort of being proud of the work that they're doing. So, there's, there's kind of the, the benefit to others and the benefit to themselves. [Tim: yeah] And of course, these, these terms are all generalized, and it depends very much on the individual interpreter. But I kind of was able to group the two different sets of motivations both for others and for themselves.

00:19:41 Tim

Yeah. So then how does that compare to women's motivation? The female motivation to get into the profession? How is it different or is it?

00:19:50 Paul

Well, unfortunately, that's one of the things that I can't answer. I didn't interview women in the field.

00:19:59 Paul

But it was definitely a recommendation [Tim: Mm-hmm] within my thesis to say, well, you know, we need to get…

00:20:07 Paul

We need this kind of data for women as well, but also, we need to get women's perception of men working in the, in the interpreting profession, which we don't have. [Tim: right] So that's something that I really would love a female interpreter to be able to take on and research and…

00:20:27 Paul

And, you know, look, really pull, I suppose, pull apart my research and say, “well, men have said this, but, you know, all these men said this to Paul, but actually all of the women have told me this about men in the interpreting field”. So, I'd really loved that contrasting argument, um, to be explored. [Tim: Mm-hmm]

00:20:45 Paul

And hopefully that will happen at some point.

00:20:48 Paul

But yeah, you know, I suspect, just because of knowing lots of female interpreters. I suspect the motivations are pretty much the same.

00:20:59 Paul

You know, people go into interpreting because they want to make the world a better place.

00:21:06 Paul

Primarily for deaf people to be able to express themselves to hearing people.

00:21:13 Paul

And for hearing people to find out what deaf people want. So, we must never forget that hearing people are also [chuckles] our customers, our clients, our target group, you know? [Tim: Mm-hmm] And we, we often forget that hearing people need an interpreter because they don't sign. [both slightly chuckle] If they could sign, we wouldn't need to be there, so I'm very, I'm very keen. I'm always mindful of the fact that we have two groups of people. [Tim: Mm-hmm] 

00:21:47 Paul

And I'm sure that female interpreters want to provide people with better access to each other, they want social justice, they want, you know, remuneration. [Tim chuckling] They want career development. They want flexibility in their work. You know, all of the things that male interpreters want, I suspect that female interpreters want as well. [Tim: yeah]

00:22:13 Tim

But unfortunately, that does not answer the question why are there fewer males in the profession than females, does it?

00:22:21 Paul

It doesn't, and that could be because of what we see. [Tim: OK] So if we see someone doing a job we think, “Oh, I could do that job.”

00:22:32 Paul

Having smaller numbers of male interpreters, other men might not see male interpreters working.

00:22:41 Tim

Mm-hmm.

00:22:42 Paul

And therefore, they might only see female interpreters and think, “Ohh well, that's a job for women.”

00:22:47 Tim

Yeah.

00:22:48 Paul

There, there is also the argument, which was a big theme that was drawn out of my research.

00:22:55 Paul

You know, is sign language interpreting linguistic or caring? We get the perception of being interpreters as being carers to deaf people, and we're doing such a wonderful job, you know, supporting these poor deaf people who can't speak English, which is absolute rubbish, you know. [Tim chuckling]

00:23:15 Paul

So, but we have the perception of being carers.

00:23:19 Paul

You know very often if I go into a, a medical situation, the practitioner will think I'm a family member.

00:23:26 Paul

They won’t ever comprehend that I've never met this person before [Tim chuckling] and that I'm there to do a professional job of interpreting the one language to another?

00:23:36 Paul

And so, so we get this label as carers.

00:23:40 Tim

Yeah.

00:23:40 Paul

And, and men traditionally are not carers.

00:23:45 Paul

And therefore, men wouldn't necessarily think, “Ohh I'll go down the route of an interpreter because it's a caring, a really nice caring thing to do.” [Tim chuckling] It just, it just doesn't happen. So usually, it's because of an incident of the, you know, the three that I've described that prompt somebody to think, “Oh, that's interesting”.

00:24:06 Tim

Yeah.

00:24:07 Paul

And so, I think there are more male interpreters certainly training in the UK, but still, you know low numbers.

00:24:19 Paul

We equally have very low numbers of interpreters from diverse backgrounds. [Tim: Mm-hmm]

00:24:27 Paul

And so, when we think about the community that we're working with, we are definitely not matching the, the people that are in, in the deaf community. So, I would really love to see more interpreters for more diverse backgrounds.

00:24:43 Tim

Yeah.

00:24:44 Paul

Because culturally, you know, I, I go into situations and I might not necessarily understand somebody's culture or background or, you know, their intent.

00:24:57 Paul

So, it can be really difficult, and you know, sometimes I'll make mistakes.

00:25:01 Paul

Whereas somebody from an individual's background is going to be a much better and more appropriate interpreter than I will. What I can do to mitigate that is try and prepare as much as I can before going into a particular assignment. But I, I, I'll probably not be the best interpreter in, in a situation that's culturally sensitive. [Tim: Yeah] 

00:25:25 Paul

But unfortunately, there is that dilemma of, is an interpreter who is not from that background better than no interpreter, and it's always a question that will be asked within interpreting, I think. [Tim: yeah, yeah]

00:25:42 Paul

So, I, I would really like to see more male interpreters, but I think it comes down to the perception of, of interpreting. 

00:25:51 Tim

Yeah, and it goes back to your statement of, “It's a perception of the public in what they see and observe. Ohh, that's not really a profession for my background. Because I don't see that.” It's a struggle, I think, now for our profession trying to get more backgrounds into the profession.

00:26:11 Tim

Right now there are so few. There's a minority of these minorities or a minority of the male population as well, because we're not seen. And I think that's a fight that training institutions, universities, trying to find. How do you motivate people to come to the profession when they don't see someone like them in the profession?

00:26:33 Paul

And also, you know I may be adding to the problem by writing a thesis and highlighting the otherness of male interpreters, [both slightly chuckling] but why don't, why don't we just call interpreters - interpreters? Why do, why do I have to write about male interpreters? Well, I guess it's because I need to highlight the issue.

00:26:52 Tim

Yeah.

00:26:52 Paul

But we talk about male nurse, we talk about male primar-

00:26:57 Paul

Do we talk about male primary teacher? [light chuckle]

00:26:59 Paul

And so, we are “othering” men, we are “othering” men in those predominantly female professions, and one way might be to get rid of that word “Male”. [Tim: Mm-hmm]

00:27:11 Paul

For example, I'm doing some work at the moment with a team in the US [both chuckle] on male occupational therapists, because that is again predominantly female profession.

00:27:24 Paul

So, I'm looking quite similarly to the research that I've done. You know, what is their motivation? What are their perceptions of, of working in a predominantly female profession of occupational therapy?

00:27:37 Paul

But I'm othering them by, you know, putting a call out for research participants who are male. But I have to do that to get my sample. But ideally, we would just call everybody interpreters and not distinguish between male and female or any other gender. Any other gender identity.

00:27:57 Tim

Yeah, that goes to the perception of what a sign language interpreter is like you were saying in your regions, people think of them as carers, but if we just say interpreter, people automatically think of it's that person in the booth at a conference and they're doing spoken language interpreting, but they don't say spoken language. They just say language. [Paul: hmm]

00:28:18 Tim

And so, it's the perception of what is an interpreter by the public. And I say back on ourselves, our responsibility of saying, designating, ourselves differently than spoken language interpreters. But yet we still put those labels there so we know what we're talking about. But in reality, we are still all interpreters. And that's hard…

00:28:39 Tim

…hard not to separate them because there are differences, [Paul: hmm] but there's so many similarities, it's hard to separate at the same time.

00:28:49 Paul

And I think the perception from the public and society when they kind of refer to us as signers.

00:28:59 Paul

So, it's, it's really interesting because they don't actually see the interpreting profession, and that's, that's often what happens, you know, when I'm in a medical situation, they'll say, “Oh, you're the signer”. [Tim: Mm-hmm]

00:29:13 Paul

And, and I, [chuckles] and I, you know, I don't start a lecture on “Well, no…an interpreter’s a profession.” You know. I, I, I, I politely say, “Yes I'm your interpreter and I'm booked for…” you know. [Tim: Mm-hmm]

00:29:28 Paul

To, to kind of hopefully get them to mirror my language of the word interpreter. [Tim: Yes]

00:29:34 Paul

So, people don't see it as a profession and that's maybe why men don't explore interpreting because it might not be seen as a profession and it might not be seen as, as a way of, you know, providing for their family as a way of earning money, of earning a salary.

00:29:53 Paul

And…

00:29:55 Paul

So, until that perception changes in the wider society, it's going to take a long time for men to realize that interpreting isn't a viable option.

00:30:06 Tim

Yeah, I wonder also is it because our profession is one that traditionally doesn't have a, a ladder to move up on, to increase your salary to become a new - promotion into this part of the field or, or this part of the field, the only thing we really have are like becoming an educator, becoming a researcher. But that's not really a difference [Paul: hmm] in the steps on the ladder of our profession. I'm just wondering, I'm putting that out there. Is that part of the perception as well?

00:30:37 Paul

Quite possibly. And I think that within interpreting, you can, I guess, be remunerated at a higher rate for specialist work. [Tim: Mm-hmm]

00:30:54 Paul

So that specialist work only comes with experience, I guess. So, you… So, it can happen in that respect. The only other way of course, as a freelance interpreter, is to do more hours, [Tim: Mm-hmm] which is not necessarily the healthiest way to increase your salary. [both laughing]

00:31:15 Paul

But through diversification, I guess, you know.

00:31:18 Paul

For me, I've, I've always been curious. I've always been interested in learning, which is interesting because if you asked my schoolteachers [Tim laughing] if that was the case when I was, you know, my secondary school, they would certainly disagree with that statement. Since finding something I'm very interested in, I've always been very curious.

00:31:41 Paul

I do lots of CPD (continuing professional development). I do lots of courses.

00:31:46 Paul

And so, for me, I haven't necessarily found the need to earn more money.

00:31:54 Paul

But I have found the need to, I guess, diversify my professional life. [Tim: Mm-hmm] So, becoming a supervisor, training to be an assessor.

00:32:06 Paul

I do some adult teaching. I do my research so my, my, my life is enriched by more than just money. [Tim: yeah] And I get a lot out of my profession. I really enjoy it and so of course I benefit from an income.

00:32:24 Paul

And I, you know, I have to think about the basic needs of life. And money is one. But I think what, what's taught me through doing a part-time PhD…

00:32:36 Paul

Is that I've had to, to kind of not work as much.

00:32:40 Paul

So, I've, I've really found that living a more economical lifestyle is actually really beneficial because I don't put a high priority on earning money. I put a high priority on doing a good job or doing something that I enjoy so that when I'm in front of someone, I'm hopefully going to be the interpreter that they want, or the supervisor that they want, or the educator that they want. So yeah.

00:33:12 Paul

Maybe, maybe that again is a societal thing that we are money driven. A lot of the time and, and maybe society needs to change that perception.

00:33:22 Tim

Yeah, yeah.

00:33:24 Paul

But then you know I'm, that, that's recognizing my privilege. You know, I am. I, I don't have children to look after, to provide for. I am in a very lucky position of being flexible. I can come to Bangkok. I can go to New York. So, I also recognize my privilege that I have within the interpreting field, most definitely. [Tim: yeah, yeah]

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00:33:53 Tim

So many things to think about, so many perspectives, looking in on public perception.

00:34:00 Tim

But first, let's go over some of the points that we can pull out of this today, quickly.

00:34:05 Tim

The main points I would say is from the very beginning of the episode, it doesn't really matter where you are physically. Doing this job, we need to have a network of support, whether it's a professional mentor supervisor or whether it's a strong group of colleagues, friends in the profession who can help us.

00:34:29 Tim

From his example, even working remotely online, he still had that support and that was key. Many times when we're working in the community live, even with our peers, we tend to have less time to communicate, to exhale some of the stress that we have, that's where we need it the most.

00:34:54 Tim

So, make sure you look for that, a network, whether it's live or remote, that you can fall back on. And then of course, we have his research. Many of the questions, just like all research, gives us more questions. It's very interesting to see that males do not necessarily show the societal norm in the UK at least.

00:35:22 Tim

The norm of holding power positions, we're more likely to work together on a peer level at least thats the perceptions he found in his research. It's interesting that males will take more risk or take jobs that stretch their skills, their knowledge, their experience more.

00:35:42 Tim

They feel they can take those steps, those risks because they don't have the risk necessarily of criticism.

00:35:51 Tim

But the question of why there are fewer male sign language interpreters still feels unanswered to me fully. Is it because we don't perceive it as a profession? I thought that was a very important point. The public doesn't necessarily think of sign language interpreting as a real profession, and therefore people wanting to get into a profession when they're researching what career path they'll take, sign language interpreter is not on the radar.

00:36:26 Tim

Unless, as he said, there is some circumstance that popped up in their lives that made them think about sign language or about interpreting. Is that the full answer? Hmm.

00:36:40 Tim

We'll have to see in the next study.

00:36:42 Tim

Or perhaps the next episode. Until then, keep calm, keep interpreting others’ opinions. I'll see you next week. Take care now.

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