IW 198: InterpreTips-10: Staring Judgement in the Reflection

You can't hide those... judging... eyes.

Stay calm and look past the cycle of judgement, of meaningless feedback. Do not be a part of it. Today I discuss the feeling of anxiety, stress, and hesitation we feel about discussing our work. These feelings stem from an atmosphere that has been created by our profession, colleagues, the nature of our work, and sometimes even ourselves.

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Transcript

IW 198: InterpreTips-10: Staring Judgement in the Reflection

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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 [ONLY TIM SPEAKS IN THIS EPISODE]

And now, InterpreTips, 10 minutes or less.

00:00:39

Today, let's get preachy, let's get judgey, let's get opinionated.

00:00:44

Or perhaps not.

00:00:46

We have a lot of frustration, a lot of anxiousness, a lot of pressure just for doing our jobs.

00:00:55

And many times, that is just us.

00:00:58

Or is it?

00:00:59

Are we bringing it on ourselves?

00:01:02

Are we worrying too much?

00:01:04

Why?

00:01:05

Why would we do that?

00:01:07

Why would we make our jobs harder?

00:01:10

Well, let's think about it for just a little bit today.

[SHORT TRANSITION MUSIC]

00:01:18

Many people say we need to let the clients decide.

00:01:22

Give the power to the clients.

00:01:24

Don't take power away from our clients.

00:01:27

And most of the time we think of that as the Deaf clients.

00:01:30

We tend in our profession to lean towards the side of the Deaf, the minority, the minority language, the minority culture, those who don't have the accessibility to the majority of the culture.

00:01:44

And that's funny because our clients are staring at us while we are doing our interpretation.

00:01:50

The Deaf are staring at us, the hearing are listening to our every word, or at least we think both of them are, but sometimes they're in their own little world.

00:02:00

But in the moment, it feels as though all eyes are on us.

00:02:05

That can present a feeling of being judged, a feeling of, I need to perform accurately, perfectly, excellently.

00:02:14

I can't make a mistake because they're all watching.

00:02:18

Along with that comes the notion that the clients, especially the Deaf, know better than we do.

00:02:26

They know the language more than we do.

00:02:28

Even if we are CODA, the Deaf know the language, the nuances, even more than we do.

00:02:35

And they're going to judge our interpretation, or how we give the interpretation.

00:02:41

The hearing people are listening to our spoken language and they're judging whether or not we sound confident or sound correct grammatically – educated.

00:02:52

But our clients don't necessarily know everything about the interpreting process.

00:02:58

They don't know what's going on in our head, so they don't realize what we're actually doing.

00:03:04

What they see is we are “communicating”, we are saying something.

00:03:10

Whenever we are taught the language, we are taught that the Deaf know the language better than we do.

00:03:15

They teach us the language.

00:03:16

They judge us on our language output.

00:03:18

They judge us on our understanding, our reception.

00:03:22

And of course, the majority of them know the language more than we do.

00:03:27

Ooh, I said the majority of our clients know the language more than we do, because not all users of interpreters know the languages as well as we do.

00:03:38

Sometimes we're working with non-native users.

00:03:41

Education is a horrible thing sometimes, or non-education.

00:03:46

And we need to deal with those things constantly.

00:03:49

And of course, our team knows better than we do, don't they?

00:03:53

They're staring at us too.

00:03:55

And we feel that moment of, are they judging my interpretation?

00:04:00

Their facial expression looks a little puzzled at what we're doing, so maybe I did something wrong, I'm not sure.

00:04:07

Of course, they know more than we do.

00:04:09

They're looking at what we've already done.

00:04:12

They're not looking at what we are doing in our heads.

00:04:17

Our team can see the interpretations, and they can see with clarity what mistakes we've done, what mistakes we are about to do because of what we've done.

00:04:28

Hindsight is much better than foresight.

00:04:33

And that leads to us having a false insecurity about what we do.

00:04:38

It gives us pressure, pressure to do our jobs perfectly.

00:04:46

And it's very hard to talk about with our team or our clients because we don't want to sound insecure.

00:04:54

We don't want to judge ourselves or ask them to judge us.

00:04:59

That's really hard to do when we already feel that pressure, that anxiety of accomplishing our work the best we can do for so many people every day.

00:05:13

It's someone new that we have to prove ourselves to.

00:05:17

There's that underlying anxiousness constantly being watched.

00:05:23

And it's not only the clients and the team, but it's also the other professionals.

00:05:27

The profession itself is judging us.

00:05:31

We constantly see it on social media.

00:05:34

Well, I can't believe interpreters today think blah, blah, blah, or those old interpreters thought blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

00:05:41

I can't believe you posted that.

00:05:42

How dare you?

00:05:43

This, this, this, this, this.

00:05:46

So many people put in anonymous in social media so they're not judged or because they feel they will be judged when they ask a critical question or a question that's very sensitive and with text it can be easily misconstrued or misunderstood.

[ROCK TRANSITION MUSIC STARTS]

00:06:05

When I'm having one of those days, I need a stiff, strong …drink of coffee.

00:06:10

In fact, you can support me in that cause.

00:06:13

Just click on the links in the show notes for Buy Me a Coffee to support interpreters worldwide.

00:06:18

Thank you.

00:06:19

Now let's go back.

[ROCK TRANSITION MUSIC ENDS]

00:06:21

So, I would challenge all of us not to do the same.

00:06:25

Don't be the one that's judging and continuing this circle, this cycle, this system of judging others' work with hindsight.

00:06:36

We talk about reflection, and reflection can be hindsight, but we need reflection without judgment.

00:06:43

We need reflection to learn what we can do better, not to judge.

00:06:48

That's why many in the West start their feedback with positive comments first, and then they add, but these could be changed OR this part of the interpretation needs this, this, this.

00:07:03

But sometimes even that feels a little passive aggressive, a little manipulative, a little judgmental, or at least hidden judgment.

00:07:13

Because once you know that the reason you're doing that, giving positive comments first and then the negative feedback after, once you know that, which do you focus on, the positive or the negative?

00:07:26

Do you start thinking, are they only saying the positive things so that they can now say all the negative things? Uff!

00:07:33

So many worries, so many circles of misunderstanding, of hindsight, reflections are sometimes the hardest thing to look at because you have to look at yourself.

00:07:46

It's you in the mirror that has all the responsibility and has all the power.

00:07:51

Once you can get the reflection to start changing, then the rest of it doesn't matter as much.

00:07:58

We talk about safe places.

00:08:00

Well, are we even safe looking in our own mirror?

00:08:04

That's what we need to think about.

00:08:06

Are we judging ourselves too harshly?

00:08:08

Are we feeling the pressure of all the people staring at us?

00:08:13

We need to feel the confidence so that we can handle and stand up to the way our job is.

[SHORT TRANSITION MUSIC]

[ROCK EXIT MUSIC STARTS]

00:08:25

So, the next time someone says, we need a client to look at this work, what does that really mean?

00:08:33

Is it looking at the interpreting process because they are an expert in that, or are they looking at the output, the interpretation itself?

00:08:41

Once we know what the interpretation needs, then we can start looking at the process, and that's where we come in.

00:08:49

We and our colleagues who are experts in the interpreting process, in the interpreting profession, Deaf and hearing, that's who can then tell us how to fix the output.

00:08:59

So, remember what the feedback is actually looking at.

00:09:03

Is it looking at our output or is it looking at our process and why it matters?

00:09:11

Put the feedback where it belongs, connect it to what part.

00:09:16

I hope this helped.

00:09:18

I hope you don't judge this episode too harshly.

00:09:22

Give me feedback when you can.

00:09:24

Until then, keep calm, keep interpreting the hindsight.

00:09:31

I'll see you next week.

00:09:32

Take care now.

[ROCK EXIT MUSIC ENDS AT 00:10:07]