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I just attended a whole day of Orientation events at Chapman University. I was thrilled to find that they had ASL interpreters for all the large group events with podium speakers! For the 1 1/2 hour long convocation ceremony, they even had a team! First of all, props to Chapman for understanding and paying for the services Deaf people need. That being said, I think they could improve their service even more.
My husband works at Chapman University, which means that I get to meet all sorts of behind-the-scene University people that most students don’t. At a wedding a while ago, I met the woman who was in charge of booking the interpreters for special events at Chapman. She told me that they were looking to improve the services they offered. I believe I told them about RID certification and how that was a really good way to know you have an amazing interpreter.
The interpreters yesterday were a mixed bag. I think they probably came from an agency, but really I’m just guessing. The first group I watched was a team of two women. The first woman was absolutely amazing and gave an equal-access interpretation. She was funny when the speaker was funny, extremely animated, and caught almost every bit of information being thrown out by the speaker. The second gal was not as good. To be fair, she was interpreting for a man using lots of folksy language and English idioms, but I felt that she didn’t match the speaker very well and she left out a lot of non-essential information.
The team did well, though. I hardly noticed when they switched between each other and they even kept interpreting through the non-captioned video that was shown. I was thoroughly impressed.
That night, I went to a talk on the History and Traditions of Chapman University. It was such a cool and funny class. I was sitting in a really bad place to watch the interpreter (there were very tall people all around me and she was standing on the floor). While I can’t really comment on the rest of the interpreting job she was doing, she didn’t interpret through the non-captioned movie, which I didn’t appreciate.
The two bits of advice I would have to Chapman about using interpreters in the future would be to ask the agency for people who are RID certified or have been interpreting more than five years. They do so much to make their students feel welcome, and I really think it would be such a relief for Deaf students to see that they were getting equal access to information being presented. It would make Deaf parents feel that they were leaving their student in the hands of someone who not only cares, but is willing to go above and beyond to meet the needs of their child.
The second piece of advice would be to put those interpreters on a podium, please!! I’d like to be able to see them no matter where I was sitting, and a little elevation will do just that.
Chapman University is a class act. For people who know next to nothing about interpreters or interpreting, they did really well! I was impressed by everything I saw yesterday, not just the interpreters. Watching their interpreters made me feel like they really cared, though. They really wanted everyone to have a good experience at orientation, not just the “normal” hearing freshmen. I think I’m going to like attending here!
n my interpreting class last night everyone was required to do a group presentation on a topic of their choice. There are only four boys in the class, so they all banded together and decided to do gender issues in interpreting. Out of all the presentations, theirs impressed me the most. They brought up a ton of interesting stuff. that I had never contemplated before about interpreting for a person of the opposite gender.
*Disclaimer: There are dirty words in this post.
To start off their presentation one of the boys signed a story to us and asked us to write down our interpretation. He told us it was an informal conversation among friends, so we should keep that in mind while interpreting. My translation was “3 of my friends and I went out to a bar. We were sitting at the counter when this girl walked up and sat down. Her skirt was so short, you could totally see her vagina.” Other girls had written down silly euphemisms like “Lady Junk” and our female teacher wrote down “she was clearly not wearing chonies.”
The boy’s point on this was that none of those words would have come out of their mouths… possibly vagina, but not very likely. When they did the same excercise, they came up with words that would be considered much dirtier, like pussy and snatch… words that most females feel uncomfortable saying. I’ve spent a lot of time around (extremely) rude and crass boys before, but none of those other terms came to my mind as I was translating. I don’t know if I was just so concentrated on the meaning that I forgot I was representing someone else’s conversation, or if it’s truly because I’m female and uncomfortable with saying those things. Maybe it was a little of both. I think this exercise was a drastic example of how the male mind and the female mind work completely differently, and that you have to be aware of those things if you’re going to interpret for someone of the opposite gender.
Another thing they brought up was “Passive Voice”. Passive Voice is a way of speaking and acting towards another person that is deferential. Women often use passive voice when interacting with people, both male and female, so as not to be perceived as bitchy. We do it without thinking about it, so it’s not a conscious choice or anything. Males, however, often use a more aggressive voice – especially in business situations. This will influence your interpreting style.
To illustrate this, the boys talked about the story of a woman interpreter and her male deaf client who was a manager at a company. She noticed as she was interpreting for him at work meetings that the assignments he gave people either didn’t get done or got done much slower than some of the other manager’s requests. She decided to have a chat with her client about how he wanted to be perceived around the office and then did her best to perpetuate that image through her speaking, even if it was uncomfortable for her. People suddenly started taking his assignments more seriously. When her client’s work evaluation came up, she did the same. Instead of saying things like “I think I did pretty well this year”, she would say things like, ” I did great this year and this is why.” She said she felt very rude and pushy doing it that way, but the performance evaluation went amazingly well. When it was over, her deaf client told her it was the best evaluation he had ever had.
I think this is another good example of an interesting thing: I know how to be a woman in the world, but in order to be a good interpreter I should also learn about being a man in the world as best I can. If I don’t learn more about gender dynamics and how men operate, I can potentially hurt a client by misrepresenting him. I mean, best case scenario – he sounds silly. Worst case scenario – he misses out on a promotion because he’s perceived as weak.
It’s a lot of food for thought, and something I’ve never really pondered before. This interpreting stuff is harder than it looks!!
I started my first interpreting class two weeks ago, and boy are we talking about some interesting things!! The name of the class is “Principles of Interpreting” and, as my teacher says, it’s everything about interpreting that doesn’t have to do with ASL. We’ve been dealing with dress codes, on the job stress, talking about types of interpreting (who knew there were so many?!), and all sorts of other things.
The topic I’m finding most pertinent right now is on the job stress. A few weeks ago, I was in a work-type situation where there were a mixed group of Deaf and Hearing folks. A very Audist gentleman was being a total A$$H*!@ to the Deaf folks, much more so than to any of the hearing. He would spontaneously yell and reprimand people publicly. I even once heard him say “I don’t care about Deaf Culture, I just want you to do it my way.” I was not the interpreter in this situation (thank God!!) but boy was I stressed!! I think the worst thing for me was that this gentleman came into the situation spouting all the right stuff about Deaf Culture and Deaf rights. It wasn’t that he didn’t know better. it was just that, when push came to shove, he didn’t care.I was so stressed one night that – I’ll admit it – I went home and cried.
In class, we’ve been talking about worse situations than the one I experienced, such as being the operator for a 911 VRS call, or having to tell someone in a hospital that their mother just died. I’ve heard all this can wear on an interpreter until the experience what’s called Vicarious Trauma. Don’t worry, I’m not re-thinking my desire to become an interpreter, I’m just thinking about all the tools I’ll need to handle this.
I have never handled stress very well. My usual master plan is to go home and have a good cry, which frankly frightens my husband. Crying is not a good strategy for stress management, at least not for me. But what other tools can I use? I’ll be pondering that as I take the rest of this course. Along with everything else I’m learning.
In the late 1600’s, an extended family from Weald, England settled on the island of Martha’s Vineyard in New England. The family carried a strong hereditary deafness gene, and as they married and intermarried, the rate of deaf people born on the island rose steadily. By the 1700’s almost everyone on the island had a deaf family member or two. Because of the high rate of deafness, the society on the island was completely different from mainstream, mainland society.
Mainland New England at this time was generally a terrible place for deaf people to live. Many people believed that deafness was a punishment from God. While the families of deaf children may have developed home signs, mainstream society could not understand these rudimentary signs, usually only good for expressing basic needs and requests, and different from home to home. Scholars debated about whether a deaf person could reason and learn like a hearing person. There were almost no career opportunities for deaf adults. The best they could hope for was to be trained to do manual labor for someone else’s business.
The prospects for deaf people on Martha’s Vineyard were completely different. Many of the former residents of the island were interviewed, and they paint an idyllic picture of what it was like to live in Martha’s Vineyard during this time. Because everyone had a deaf family member, everyone in the community knew sign language. Deaf people were farmers, store clerks, anything they wanted to be. Hearing people would sign to each other over the large expanses the island farms created, a deaf person could walk into a store and the clerk would always know sign. Deaf people were even elected to high political office, becoming mayors and council members for the island, a thing unheard of in the rest of the country. When telling stories about the community, the people who were being interviewed could only remember after much prompting if the people they were talking about were hearing or deaf.
The rare deaf/hearing equality experienced in Martha’s Vineyard is still remarkable today. In a society where hearing people are ignorant about deaf issues and can be very rude, a place like Martha’s Vineyard seems particularly wonderful. The equality that was shared by everyone, and the prejudices about deaf people that didn’t exist, make the little island community seem like the perfect place. Many deaf people consider it the ultimate utopia.
Ironically, the opening of the first deaf school in Hartford, Connecticut was a big reason why the hereditary deafness on the island petered out. Many deaf people from the island attended the school, met and married other deaf people who’s deafness wasn’t hereditary, and lived and had children near the school on the mainland of New England. As more and more of the population moved away, less and less deaf children were born on the island. In 1952, hereditary deafness died on the island with the death of Katie West. Though the community is gone today, it’s signs live on. Children attending the Hartford school mixed their signs in with the French Sign Language Laurent Clerc brought with him from Paris, creating much of the uniquely beautiful American Sign Language that exists today.
he MacArthur Fellowship Genius Grants were announced a few days ago. For those of you who don’t know what this is, the John D. and Catherine T. Macarthur foundation gives $500,000.00 to 20-40 Americans who “show exceptional merit and promise for continued and enhanced creative work.” These Americans can be in any field and they can spend the money on whatever they feel like, no strings attached.
This year Carol Padden was one of the recipients! Carol and her husband, Tom Humphries, wrote several books about Deaf Culture, including “Deaf in America: voices from a culture”, “Inside Deaf Culture”, and two textbooks for learning American Sign Language. I have read many of her books and consider them some of the best I’ve ever read on the subject of Deaf Culture.
Carol was born Deaf to her two Deaf parents and she also has a Deaf brother. She attended a Deaf elementary school for a time before being put into a mainstream school. Currently, Carol is a professor at University of California San Diego and studies signed languages. She recently studied a new signed language in Africa that uses the actual body of the signer to indicate pronouns, as opposed to the area around the signer as in American Sign Language.
Carol is the first ever Deaf recipient of the Genius Grant. She says she has no concrete plans for the money yet, but will probably use it for creative research. “Maybe I have a few wild ideas I’ve been obsessing about,” she said in an interview “But they’re a little bit crazy. I’m not going to tell you about them until I can make them sound a little more rational.”
Not only am I excited that the field of Sign linguistics has gotten such amazing recognition, it couldn’t have happened to a nicer person. Congratulations Carol Padden!!!
aturday was horrifically hot and awful. It was over 100 degrees, and you could see the waves of heat coming off the macadam roadways. Instead of staying inside like any decent person would, I worked Deaf West’s booth at DEAFestival LA. Aside from the unbearable heat, I had an amazing time!
My shift at the booth was supposed to start at 2:00, but I hit the inevitable LA traffic. That, coupled with a 3 car accident on the side of the road, served to make me a bit late. As I pulled off the freeway, I saw with relief the little sign procaiming DEAFestival parking, and a blue arrow pointing the way in. Murphy’s law tends to work out so that whenever I’m running late, I usually get lost too. I was excited that didn’t have to worry about that today. I drove down a dusty road while a volunteer pointed me to park in a vast expanse of dustiness. There was a bus, shuttling people from parking lot to festival, so I retrieved my purse from the back seat of the car, straightened my new blue “Deaf West” shirt, and trudged through the dust to the bus stop. I was excited when I knew one of the volunteers helping people park! She also volunteers at Deaf West sometimes. We chatted a little before I took my place in the shade to await the bus.
It probably took less that 15 minutes for the bus to arrive, but the opressive heat made it seem like much longer. My little Disney Heat Index trained self was telling me to drink water NOW or suffer the consequesces. Too bad I hadn’t brought any with me. As I waited, I caught snippets of conversation from the others waiting for the bus. I think that’s the first time I’ve understood parts of ASL conversation without trying too. Evidence I’m getting better?
The bus dropped us all off underneath a line of tall pine trees, next to another field of dustines. Blue Easy-ups stretched out in the vast expanse of brown dirt while people bustled here and there. I joined them, determined to rush around and find the Deaf West booth as quickly as possible. As soon as I joined the crowd, a woman stopped me.
“Hi! You work for Deaf West?” she asked, signing with a very student accent.
“No, I’m a volunteer.” I signed back.
“Are you hearing?” She asked me.
“Yes.”
“Oh thank goodness.” She said to me in English. She wanted to know about volunteering at Deaf West. I told her that I considered it an amazing experience, that they needed people for just about everything, and that she could go on the website and fill out their form if she was interested. We exchanged names, and I went on my way.
I found the booth pretty quickly, in the middle of the middle aisle. Ty, the Deaf West representative was chatting with someone in front of me. “Hi!” I signed to him, ” I’m volunteering today. I’m soooo sorry I’m late!”
“Don’t worry about it.” He signed back to me, and I took my place behind the counter. The next two hours were great. I chatted with people in my bad ASL, handed out forms, asked them if they wanted to win tickets, explained the shows that were coming up, and all together had an amazing time. They even had bottles of water for us to drink so we didn’t get dehydrated! The other girl who was volunteering with me was an ASL 2 student, and she did so well!! I don’t know that I would have done as well as she did when I was in ASL 2. We made friends fast, and exchanged numbers at the end of our booth stint. Several Deaf people asked me my name, several more decided to tease me (which I always enjoy), and I saw a lot of funny t-shirts. “I laughed my ASL off” was one of the t-shirts I really liked, but my favorite by far was “Don’t Scream, I’m not that Deaf.” I also saw a LOT of people I knew milling about in the crowd. It was exciting to know that I was recognizing people and becoming a part of the community, slowly but surely.
When my booth stint was up, I wandered around for a few minutes. I decided several months ago that my dream interpreting job would be to work for GLAD (Greater Los Angeles Agency for the Deaf), so I was excited to see their signs. I took a bunch of fliers, figuring I would peruse them later. I also walked around to see if there was any ASL merchandise I wanted to buy. Sadly there were only two booths selling things, and they were things I really wasn’t interested in. The other thing I really missed was the TTY museum. Maybe they decided not to attend because all their antique machines would be outside in the dust. Aside from all the booths with Deaf themes, booths from the city of Los Angeles were there too. The Democratic party had a booth, the water district had a booth, and so did one of the candidates for city council. It was nice to see people who aren’t part of the Deaf community trying to participate. I commend them for trying, but it didn’t seem like many people were interested in what they were doing. To be honest, I wasn’t very interested in what they were doing either.
I had an appointment that evening, so after I strolled leisurely through the rows of booths, I took the bus back to my dust-covered car and went on my merry way. It was a great day! I think my ASL stood up really well to the challenge of explaining things, I got to meet neat people, and I got to spend time with the Deaf community. What could be better than that? Not a whole lot.
One of the gals I worked at Deaf West with asked me if I’d like to help out on a Deaf film last weekend. Of course I got really excited and said yes!! I didn’t know the director or anything before-hand but the two lead actors on the film were also in My Sister In This House, and I knew that several of the people I worked with at Deaf West would be helping on the film. It’s only been a month since the show has been over and I already miss the girls at Deaf West soooo much. Plus, an afternoon to practice signing is the BEST thing ever. I met everyone at GLAD in Eagle Rock for the shoot. I had never been there before, and I couldn’t believe how beautiful it is. The building is a 1920’s spanish style that’s been modernized to be state of the art. They have the most beautiful garden with a fountain, and there are trees just surrounding the building. Inside, everything is extra nice. It seemed as home-like as an office can seem, to me. They had plush sofas, dark wooden desks, pictures on the walls, and an air of calm importance. I’ve often thought about working for GLAD once I become certified, and visiting just solidified my wish.
We had a great time. Jules Dameron is a Deaf girl doing her best to make it as a film-maker. She wrote and directed Beyond Essays, an all ASL film with Deaf actresses. It speaks to many hot-button issues in the Deaf community, like the ASL vs English debate, and includes a protest of AB2072. I checked out a few of her other short films on line this week and she’s brilliant. She’s made some very cool films.
I would say we were about 1/2 deaf and 1/2 hearing on the set. Many of the production people didn’t know sign at all, but about 1/2 of the Production Assistant helpers were deaf, and all of the actors were deaf. They had about three interpreters at a time on set, and they were a big help. A couple of the production people started mistaking me for an interpreter when they realized how much sign I knew, oops!! I pointed them in the right direction immediately: signing is one skill, interpretation is a totally different ball of wax. I’m better than nothing, but everyone’s going to get much more accurate information from someone who’s been trained properly. I guess that’s what I get for wearing a black shirt.
Mostly I ran errands around the set, and off the set… someone had to go get lunch. I also did a lot of chatting with folks in the Green Room during down times. I felt like my ASL held up pretty well to everything, and I was WAY less nervous about communicating than I have been in the past. It was great getting tons of practice. I noticed again how much better my receptive skills are than my expressive. I need to get back into the swing of going to events around town and improve the signing that I’m doing a little more.
The day wound up with Jules asking many of the production folks to step in and be protesters for the film. I didn’t expect to be on screen at all, but I may be in the movie!! It was so much fun to stand in front of the camera yelling “Preserve ASL” at the top of my lungs while signing the words madly and vehemently in the beautiful courtyard. It was the perfect ending to my day.
I’ll be excited to see what Beyond Essays turns out to be in it’s finished form. If the stuff I saw this weekend is any indication, it’s going to be an amazing film. Right now, the estimated run time is around 10-minutes. I’ll let everyone know when it comes out.
t Mount San Antonio College, where I’m studying for my sign certificate, there are ducks all over the ASL department. Rubber ducks, duck pens, decoy ducks, yellow feathers, plush ducks, basically any kind of duck you can think of, it’s there somewhere. Frequently I’ll come into class and there will be duck pictures drawn all over the white boards, with the words “Quack” written everywhere too. On the day a bunch of people came into class wearing duck masks and pelting little duck erasers at the teacher, we got a hilarious explanation of what’s really going on. This is what we were told:
Robert Arnold started it all, he fully admits to everything. In his first year of teaching, he was required to attend these once a week meetings about how to be a better teacher. He’s Deaf, so he had two interpreters to go with him. Well, the meetings were pretty boring. So instead of trying to pay attention, he decided to screw with the interpreters. He would be signing really inappropriate things to the one interpreter while the other interpreter was trying to do her job, and vice versa. The interpreter would be watching their conversation and trying really hard not to be unprofessional and laugh. The other two were also frequently trying not to laugh out loud and disturb the meeting, which they did with varying success. The interpreters didn’t know what to do. They finally asked the big boss, Julie Bradley, what they should do about the situation so they could remain professional.
Julie decided to come down to the meeting and see what was going on for herself. Instead of behaving himself, Bob asked the interpreters why someone hadn’t made an air freshener for farts. You could stick it up there and when you farted it could emit a little puff of scent and be really nice. Or how about a whistle? Instead of the farting noise, it could whistle Yankee Doodle or Camp Town Races or something. Eventually this devolved into sticking a duck whistle up there. That way when you farted, you would emit a really loud duck call. After that he would draw pictures of ducks on pieces of paper and hold them up for the interpreters to see as they were trying to do their job.
And so the Duck Wars were born. It’s the interpreters against the Deaf teachers, and they both attempt to recruit students to their side. The interpreters started leaving Bob little plush ducks and things, and Bob chuckled in glee as he told us about the day he completely covered every inch of Julie’s office with yellow feathers. She duckified his office in retaliation a little while later, and now there are ducks all over the place. Most of the students seem to be on Juile’s side. As she points out, she teaches most of the interpreting classes and it’s kinda up to her whether we pass the program or not. I also think that, as future interpreters ourselves, we tend to side with our partners in occupation.
As Bob says, the Duck Wars are a great way to break the monotony at work and have a little fun among colleagues. I think it gives our department a little more personality. All the students love it, and it’s never disrupted our learning environment. In fact, I think it adds to it. It’s great to be in a serious class, but sometimes a little diversion helps you study better after it’s over. So if you’re going to Mt. SAC, slip someone a duck.
I’ve been doing this blog for over a year now, and I think it’s high time there was some signing going on. My teacher asked us to sign an embarrassing moment that had happened to us, and it had to involve either food or liquid. I’m pretty proud of the video, and I thought I’d share it. There’s one place where I get a little flummoxed, but otherwise I think it’s great. The transcript is below for everyone who’s “ASL Challenged”. Thanks for watching!!
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long time ago, I worked at a Dinner Theater. You know, people go in and sit down and eat and when they’re finished they watch a show? Yeah. I was a bus girl. I filled people’s water glasses, I gave people bread baskets, and I took away everyone’s dirty plates. I was busy all the time, always running around. I didn’t have time to take a dirty plate, walk all the way to the kitchen with it, and then do it all again. Instead, I had a tray. I would place it at the end of the table and put all the dirty dishes there. When everyone was finished, I would carefully pick up the tray and walk to the kitchen with it.
One night I was running around like usual, and I heard the music start, I heard the show start. I hadn’t picked up my tray yet! I ran into the dining room and picked it up as quickly as I could, but I wasn’t very careful. As I stood up, the tray slid backwards and crashed to the floor. Plates went flying everywhere and food went flying everywhere. Everyone’s head snapped in my direction as people picked up their feet to avoid being hit by the flying food. I was standing there all red faced when the lights went out. I had to sit there in the darkness, picking up all the plates, and cleaning up all the food.
My boss was a funny guy. At the end of the night he came up to me and said, “Oh, poor you. You had a bad night. Here’s a soda.”
I thought, “Really? I made this horrible mistake and you’re giving me soda? Wow.”
Thank you, Thank you!!
ately, I’ve found myself dreaming in Sign. I’ll be sitting there in a dream and someone will walk up to me and start signing, and I’ll start signing back to them. One night I dreamed that my dad was signing to me, but he was using some dialect I couldn’t understand and I kept having to ask him to sign it again. The oddest people in my dreams have only known sign: Librarians, check-out people at the supermarket, my Music teacher (that’s ironic, right?), random strangers passing by on the street. The best part is, I’m usually fluent in ASL without effort in my dreams. Yay! If only it were that way in real life…
I poked around a little on line and saw that it’s pretty common for people learning a language, or who have previously learned a language, to dream in it. I wonder why we do that? Some people claim that it’s because we’re studying a language seriously, but I don’t think that can be true in all cases. I’ve frequently had sign dreams during the summertime when I’m not taking classes at all. I’m hoping it really means that ASL is seeping into my consciousness a little more.
No matter why it’s happening, I’m kind of excited that it is. Sign is just as fun when you’re sleeping as when you’re awake. Trust me, I know.
If My Hands Could Speak... 