IW 151: InterpreComedy: Grumpy Old Man Shouting at the Clouds

Young kids just don't get it!

Let's take a silly look at how generations of sign language interpreters may have frustrations, and just plain grumpiness at times.

We all need to roll our eyes at times. WE may get annoyed at how things are not the same as they were. But sign language interpreters have been adapting, changing, and respecting others for a long time. Civility is still needed, as always.

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Transcript

IW 151: InterpreComedy: Grumpy Old Man Shouting at the Clouds

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[ROCK INTRO MUSIC STARTS]

00:00:02 Tim [ONLY TIM SPEAKS 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

[in a grumpy annoyed voice] And now the quote of the day, let's get this over with. What's it? Let me see, umm, this quote is by some old grumpy guy from the movie called Grumpy Old Men.

00:00:52

And there's actually 2 quotes, so just listen.

00:00:56

“A little grumpiness keeps the young folks on their toes.”

00:01:01

And the second…

00:01:03

“You don't get old by being stupid. You get old by surviving stupid.”

00:01:08

[normal voice] These two quotes show how we do get grumpy and sometimes when we're grumpy, the younger generation looks at us or the younger people look at us and roll their eyes and think they just don't understand the modern world.

00:01:24

They don't understand today. They don't understand technology. But when we're grumpy, when we're sarcastic, when we make jokes, when we complain or annoyed, sometimes it makes the younger generation think. Think about why we say what we say, or at least it makes them become more confident in their own decisions about what they think the world is.

00:01:54

We’ve gone through stupid. We've been stupid and we've survived it.

00:01:55

Today, let's take a “reflective” look at how we are just human. Sometimes we are grumpy, sometimes we're bubbling with excitement.

00:02:07

Even those of us who are just always happy and laughing and smiling. Sometimes we get tired too, and we need to rejuvenate ourselves. We need to reflect on our behavior, reflect on our viewpoint and how we work with others.

00:02:27

It's a way to give part of the passion that we have for the profession to the new generations, to our colleagues, to our peers, when they're feeling down, when they are losing energy to help each other become stronger, to keep going. One way to stop or prevent burnout is to recognize it in ourselves and in others, and help bring the passion back.

00:02:55

So, let's take a quick look at what that may look like ooor what it may not look like.

00:03:03

You be the judge.

00:03:04

Let's get started.

[SHORT TRANSITION MUSIC]

00:03:10

So, I'm walking with a colleague just leaving a workshop right after that feeling of, you know, the “conferencitis”, the excitement of the place, the people, the workshop, getting to know new people, all of that wonderful vibe, the vibrations going through your body up to your brain, and getting you thinking about all these new ideas, new connections, pushing the passion of the profession inside you to a higher level. And then the colleague looks to you and says, “That was wonderful wasn’t it?”

00:03:50

And their face drops just a little bit when they see the look in your eye. This one saw the look in my eye and pass the smile, the excitement on my face. And it was though they looked deep into my soul, and they asked the question, “But you knew all this already, didn't you?”

00:04:07

And the grumpy old man inside me said, “Yeah, yeah, I did.”

00:04:12

You know that feeling when you just didn't wake up correctly when you had made a lot of mistakes sleeping the night before?

00:04:21

Or you didn't start your day off the best way with your yoga, with your Pilates. OK, who am I kidding? without your coffee. [coughs] And so you have that feeling where it's hard to hide your feelings. Sometimes it shows, sometimes you raise your cane, and you wave it at the clouds in the sky and you say, “Get out of my sunshine!”

00:04:50

So, I answered truthfully to my colleague, “Yes, yes, I already knew all this. Yeah.” And it's true. When you've been in the profession for a long time, when you've been a sign language interpreter and you've gone to dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens of workshops and conferences…

00:05:05

…webinars, zoom meetings, you've heard it all before. You've heard a lot about the interpreting process, about ethics, about dilemmas, decision making, our role. We've all heard it many times.

00:05:26

And sometimes those of us who are more experienced, we become jaded when we don't prepare ourselves to be open minded to realize.

00:05:34

That maybe there's a new twist. Maybe there's a new take. We usually go to these workshops, or these conferences and we realize this is not necessarily for me except to keep reinforcing.

00:05:48

In my mind, remembering what it's like not to know these things, to see new colleagues who are just thinking about these, making the connections that fuel or should fuel our passion to continue and use our wisdom, our coffee conceptual accurate experience to give them another passion push, to get the energy from them to remember where we came from, to remember why we're here and to not forget and become jaded, and to remember to put our cane down and stop looking at those pesky clouds over our sunshine. Yes, the professions not really gonna change. Let me rephrase that.

00:06:36

Our work basically will stay the same. The processing, understanding, our clients, being there for our clients, using those skill sets, all of that will stay the same. Everything around it will start changing the landscape of how we do it, going from live to online, perhaps in a 3D virtual reality setup.

00:07:06

Who knows what the future will be. Will we have an AI assistant being our team, feeding US information, knowing when we need something that may change so the workshops, the conferences, everything we do, many of us will see them again and again and again with new speakers, with new people talking about it.

00:07:26

With a renewed passion, a renewed excitement of something that they've just learned, how they've just connected something that we already connected years ago.

00:07:42

We should not raise our canes in frustration and annoyance, but rather we should raise our colleagues being excited for them, being excited for the profession that it is growing, that it's continually evolving individually and as a group.

[SHORT TRANSITION MUSIC]

00:08:07 [Conversation with people at conference-we hear only one side of the converstion]

Yeah. Yeah, it's great to be here. Wonderful workshop. I'm really excited. Yeah, definitely. [to himself] Ohh, man. I'm not excited about this. It's the same topic every year, OK? Every three months they, they pull out this topic and they somebody else has to talk about it. But yeah, yeah, I've been busy. Busy. Well…

00:08:24

And “crazy busy” and “busy crazy”. What? Yeah, you know, “crazy busy” means I am extremely busy all the time. This week, nonstop work. And then the next week, also busy nonstop work. But “busy crazy” means nonstop work with crazy, strange, weird jobs. Yeah. Well, for example, it's like, uh, you get there, [chuckles] and you think, am I back in 1960? Uh, they're calling the Deaf, actually using the words “retarded, deaf and dumb, mute”.

00:09:05

Yeah. Yeah. Ohh, but that's not all. That's not all. No, no. Because then it's reversed. And the deaf client is actually using the same words. Like, “Is he ‘retarded’? Because why is he calling me these names?”

00:09:22

I'm like, wow. And they're actually using these words.

00:09:27

Some of them actually believing them. And here I am, clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, and I'm stuck in the middle. Busy-Crazy, Busy-Crazy. Yep. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I, I haven't heard this speaker either. No. Yeah. Ohh. Really. She's new. That, that's, that's, that's good.

00:09:48

That's. That's great. “Yeah, that's great. Another new graduate with their Master’s degree, their PhD candidate, and they've done some research and found out that, that, ‘Oh my gosh, interpreters are not actually neutral. They are not actually impartial. They do have opinions.’ Ohh great. We're going to talk about that today. Yep. I can see on the PowerPoint. I'm happy she discovered that we are not a robot. Yeah, that's a funny. Funny, funny, funny, funny, funny meme.

00:10:25

Uuuuh. [rolls eyes]

00:10:26

Yeah, it sounds like it's going to be a wonderful workshop. Can't wait for the breakout discussions on, on how we feel about this.

00:10:33

Can't wait. Showing my feelings again because you know, as an interpreter, I usually don't have those feelings, those busy crazy feelings. Nope. Sure don't, boy. Ohh, goody. Yay! We're gonna have... Oh, it's break time. OK, great. We get to go talk to someone els-. Oh, no. This person wants to talk to me, and I don't know this.

00:10:54

Hi. Yeah. Uh-huh. No, you've heard about me. That's, that's, that's, that's, That's nice. Ohh. So and so told you. Ohh. OK. Yeah. What do you need?

00:11:08

You wanna know how to improve your interpreting skills. Just in general, or are you writing a book about it? Or in specifically - in general, you're interpreting skills? That's what you wanna ask me about. That's great. Uh-huh. OK. Well, I would say, yeah.

00:11:25

So yeah, yeah, you could go to workshops like this and that would help you overtime, yeah. Mm-hmm.

00:11:31

I'm gonna get me coffee here. Yeah. Uh-huh. Ohh good. We got 2 minutes left. Uh-huh. Ohh, that's one of those breaks of 5-minute break to stand up, walk over, grab your coffee and then realize you need to go use the restroom and you have no time left. Beautiful break time. Great scheduling in the agenda. I love these workshops. Ohh. They're still talking to me.

00:11:50

Yeah, their mouth is moving. Uh-huh. Yeah, yeah, that's great. Be polite. Be polite. Have the coffee, breathe. Stop being a grumpy old man.

[ROCK TRANSITION MUSIC STARTS]

00:12:01

What are you doing? Come on, click on the link in the show notes. It says Support the Show or Buy Me A Coffee. Either way, you're going to support me and the podcast and then you'll have more of these wonderful episodes. [sighs] Thank you. Aah - let's go back.

[ROCK TRANSITION MUSIC ENDS]

00:12:19

What are some of the things we get grumpy about?

00:12:22

Well, sometimes we just wanna work and be done. Go home, shut off and do what we wanna do. Maybe we need to be with our families. Maybe we just need to read a book, or we just need to go on vacation. But there always seems to be something another job.

00:12:42

Ohh, but it's really important this this client has been waiting for so long. Yes, and I've been waiting for so long to get a vacation. Excuse me while I get my grumpy cane and wave it in the air because who is more important? Me my clients. It's really hard, isn't?

00:13:00

We're in a profession where we have to be allies. We understand that we have privilege. We understand that we have more, just more. And yet we also need to understand that we need time for ourselves before we put the mask on the minority next to us.

00:13:21

We need to put the mask on ourselves first.

00:13:25

Otherwise, we can't support anyone. If you didn't understand that - I'm talking about when you're on a plane and they, say, put the oxygen mask on you before helping someone else.

00:13:35

We have told ourselves, you know, we, we don't want to help because we're not helpers. Why does everyone want something from us? Ohh, we're a wonderful interpreter.

00:13:49

Mm-hmm. Ohh, we are the ones who can do it all. We are the only interpreters who can do this. This one job. There's nobody else available and we give, and we give, and we give. Back in my day, when we first started interpreting, we had fun. We could choose any job we wanted.

00:14:08

The clients we served were nice. They always helped us when we were walking to our gig, uphill through the snow. We could handle it. Sometimes we even had coffee with our clients.

00:14:21

What do we get grumpy about? Hearing the same old ideas over and over again as though they're new ideas. And we understand. This new generation they have their own ideas, their new “authenticity”. Back in my day, we just said, integrity, be honest, be open, be flexible, be adaptable. But now we have the new words authenticity, agency, aren't we all talking about the same thing? Excuse me, my cane’s in the way. Grumpy is as Grumpy does.

00:14:57

You know, when I rolled my eyes when everyone said my pronouns are this and I thought that's great. Now how do I sign those pronouns, especially in international sign? Ohh boy, the cane’s are waving high now.

00:15:17

And then I find out that all the signs I've been using, well, we gotta change those signs now. Well, that's great. Language changes. I, I completely understand that. But when no one has told me that these have changed, except when I'm actually working.

00:15:32

Why do people get upset when I don't know the [voice changes to U.S. Southern accent] newfangled word or the newfangled sign? I just don't understand. I'm doing my best. Did you not understand what I signed? You did? Are you offended by it because I didn't use the new sign that you just learned last week, and now you're offended because I'm not using that word right now? Uugh!

00:15:51

Hang on, my cane is out of bullets.

00:15:55

OK, now we're ready. I'm back on the grumpy train. Train, gun, uff! This metaphor is getting off the tracks.

00:16:05

So many things to be grumpy about when things are not the same as you're used to. Interpreters are very flexible and we're very good at keeping a professional face when things change or surprise us in our work.

00:16:20

But by golly, sometimes we have to just twist and turn and do the limbo to please everyone. When's it our turn? When do I get to have my time? My agency? My turn to rest.

00:16:35

Grumpy, can you say grumpy? I knew you could. We all need to have that special person to get our grumpiness out of us, to break our cane over the cloud and realize it's gonna be OK.

[SHORT TRANSITION MUSIC]

[ROCK EXIT MUSIC STARTS]

00:16:54

Well for those of you who don't understand, I am only joking. Or AM I? Well, just keep talking and maybe they'll believe that, OK.

00:17:04

So…

00:17:06

My point today is to show us that the passion of the profession does not mean necessarily only your passion, but to remember that the passion of the profession is all of us together.

00:17:19

And sometimes our energy levels get very low, and get frustrated, become nonexistent, and we have to feed off of the others. Yes, that's right. Become a “vampire interpreter” and suck the lifeblood and passion from someone else. It… Wait. That's... NO. Remember that the passion flows within all of us, and it strengthens all of us.

00:17:45

It gives us that power, that force to be the best interpreter you can be. So, until next time, keep calm, keep interpreting. May the passion be with you. I'll see you next week. Take care now.

[ROCK EXIT MUSIC ENDS AT 00:18:36]