The deaf speaker, presenting to an audience of people who knew ASL pretty well but not fluently, fingerspelled a number I wasn’t entirely sure of. I thought I got it, but wasn’t 100% confident in my perception. I didn’t have a team interpreter to support me in voicing. Someone in the audience said the thing I wasn’t sure of, and it turned out I was right. Yet, after they did that bit of work for me, I asked the presenter to reiterate the lexical item. I was doing consecutive interpreting, and while I was watching the deaf signer, yet another audience member said the thing I wasn’t sure of. I said, “Just a moment. I’m getting this.” And then I said the thing we all thought the deaf person said, only this time I was sure of my interpretation. The dialogue between me and the audience members was quiet, and it didn’t seem to be a big deal for anyone, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it after the assignment.

Why did I do what I did? Was it the most appropriate and effective behavior? What could I have done differently? Why didn’t I just let it go when the audience member guessed rightly? And, even if they had guessed wrongly, would it have mattered? These are the questions that nagged me this morning.

I think I did what I did for several reasons I’m not necessarily proud of.

1. I didn’t trust myself.
2. I overestimated the importance of the little thing I missed.
3. I wanted to control my work.
4. I didn’t want to set an unfavorable precedent.

Notice I said, “not necessarily proud of.” That is not to say that it’s never okay to do these things. It is just to say that, in this case, I don’t think any of those “intrapersonal demands” in Demand-Control Schema (Karasek, 1979; Karasek & Theorell, 1990; Dean & Pollard, 2001) were well founded. First of all, I need to get better at trusting myself when I’m 90% sure I’m right; second, I need to get better at realizing when something’s just not that important; third, control is an illusion (or so they say); fourth, and the point of this post, is what is so wrong with letting consumers doing our work for us once in a while?

Could two different members of the audience both be wrong about something I’m 90% sure I’m right about? Unlikely. As far as precedent is concerned, there may be times we want our consumers to let us do our job because we are the interpreter in the room; they are not. It is sometimes not a good thing to have more than one person interpreting at once. And it is not a good thing if the “peanut gallery” gets the interpretation wrong. But we have to look at each case individually and not be rigid. In this case, I don’t think it would have done any harm at all to allow what happened to happen and let it go. It would have modeled good interpreter behavior, acknowledged them for their linguistic ability, and let the speaker go on unimpeded. If I had it to do over, my “control” in Demand-Control Schema would be either to say nothing or say something funny like, “what she said!” Next time, next time…

Incidentally, after I analyzed this interpreting scenario this morning, I read this today in a book by one of the world’s foremost experts on interpreting:

It should be noted that in interpreting, unlike translation, all parties concerned are aware of the communication situation, including possible difficulties associated with the interlingual and sometimes intercultural transfer. Since generally all parties wish to communicate, more cooperation can be expected from them than in translation…. Cooperation may also be forthcoming from listeners, especially in consecutive, where they can help the interpreter with word equivalents and generally listen sympathetically, though this is not always the case. In other words, although the interpreter essentially works alone, he or she may be helped through on-line interaction with both Sender and Receiver, while in translation such interaction is rather rare (Gile, 1995, emphasis mine).

It was so great to read something this afternoon that reinforces the reflections I had this morning! We interpreters should always strive to do our best. One way we can do our best is to be humble enough to let our consumers do our work for us sometimes.

Resources

Dean, R. K. & Pollard, R. Q (2001). The application of demand-control theory to sign language interpreting: Implications for stress and interpreter training. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 6 (1), 1-14.

Gile, D. (1995). Basic concepts and models for interpreter and translator training (p.24). Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

The original poster started a very interesting discussion about using language that might be misunderstood by children, and I am reposting my comment because I would like to share my viewpoint with my readers.

I wrote:

I can appreciate your concern for your students, (e, but I agree with MM. Although some ways of communicating may be confusing, I believe they should be taught rather than avoided. Each instance of misunderstood sarcasm can be a teaching moment for a second language learner. Sarcasm and other elements of second language, which English is for most deaf and hard-of-hearing people, have to be explicitly taught.

I sometimes have to reverse myself when I begin to — forgive the expression — “dumb down” my writing with deaf people. With certain people, things must be greatly simplified, but with many people I think one should be oneself and let the person figure it out. Most deaf people certainly don’t dumb down their ASL for me or slow down their signing for me. I am an interpreter, and they just expect me to understand them and interpret what they are saying. I learn new bits of visual language all the time because of deaf people’s being themselves and signing naturally. Don’t I owe them the same genuineness of myself? Perhaps the more I write English or — with the appropriate person — sign English or fingerspell unusual turns of phrase, the more I express who I am and give them the opportunity to learn how a hearing person speaks and writes.

It’s not that my place is to teach; it’s just that everyone–hearing and deaf alike–can learn more about each other and each other’s language when we speak naturally. I thank every French-speaking, Spanish-speaking, and ASL-speaking person who has ever spoken to me in their natural way, because that is how I have learned their languages.

In Gmail, tap Menu, then More, then Settings. Scroll all the way down to Vibrate. The default is Never. Tap the down arrow to change this. Select Only in Silent Mode or, to be safe, For all Gmail notifications.

In Email, tap Menu, then Account settings, and scroll down to Vibrate. Here’s where it can trip you up, because it is different from Gmail. In Gmail, what you see is what you get; i.e., if you see For all Gmail notifications, that’s when it will vibrate. In Email, it will say “Also vibrate when email arrives,” but that’s not what you get unless you select it. As with Gmail, the default is Never. To change this, tap the down arrow and select either Always or Only in Silent Mode. I select Always to be safe. Note that you will have to repeat this process for every one of your Email accounts.

In Messaging,
follow the same directions as for Email. As always, the default is Never. Why Google would make never the default for all these messaging apps I cannot understand, especially when the wording is misleading in the settings for Email and Messaging. What’s even more misleading is that the messaging apps settings do not honor the system settings for the device itself. I had already set device settings to Vibrate: Always. So why should Always not apply to messages? Pretty stupid, if you ask me.

So, now you know how to make sure your Android device vibrate when new messages come in. I’m happy to give free advice as a netizen who has benefited from other bloggers, but I’m also happy to donate to bloggers when their helpful hints save me a lot of dough. If this blog post saves you money, please consider donating to my blog by going to the home page and clicking on the PayPal Donate button. Thanks!

I work as a freelance interpreter for the deaf, and the agents I work for send out mass emails whenever they need to fill requests. In this age of email, when every interpreter I know carries a mobile device with them, I can respond to a request in 60 seconds and the agency will tell me it was already filled by another interpreter who responded in 30 seconds. It’s not always that fast, but when I don’t even realize I got an email from an agency until 20 to 30 minutes after the fact, it does me no good to have a mobile device. That’s why it’s so business-critical that I be notified the moment an assignment offer goes out.

Posted from WordPress for Android

I first spoke with Amanda, the conference organizer, on Thursday afternoon, January 14, and offered to interpret and coordinate. She told me the budget was $2,000 for a four–track conference which would need a maximum of eight interpreters. I figured I could get four professional interpreters to earn $50 an hour, get four students to volunteer their services pro bono, and that would still leave $400, half of which might go toward compensating me for coordinating services, and half of which might go toward gift cards for students.

That same night, I found out that Amanda had un–registered a deaf registrant because she didn’t like her attitude. I advocated for the ousted registrant, emailing Amanda, “Deaf people routinely face discrimination and have to fight for their rights. In light of this, I find the registrant’s demands assertive rather than aggressive.” I even followed this up another day and asked Amanda if she would please consider reinstating her. Amanda was immovable.

I should mention that the first deaf registrant had approached me around Thanksgiving about interpreting for WordCamp. I had said I would be interested and asked him to send me more information, but the holidays came and went before I saw an announcement from Amanda on the Arizona RID Yahoo Group. I knew how important it was for this deaf person to attend WordCamp, so I decided to provide for him even though I was not happy with Amanda’s handling of the other deaf registrant.

By the end of the week, I had offers from two other professionals and at least four other students. At this point, all I needed was one more professional if (and that’s a big “if”) there were deaf attendees in all four tracks on Saturday.

In the meantime, I wondered whether there were any deaf attendees registered for Friday. Amanda had not told me it was overbooked, only that she didn’t have the budget for it. I figured if we didn’t need eight interpreters on Saturday, we could provide services on Friday as well. On Friday the 14th, I emailed the attendee I knew was going Saturday and asked him if he were going Friday. Note that I didn’t “offer” to interpret Friday; I merely asked him if he had registered. I heard back from the Tuesday after the MLK weekend, and he verified that he had registered for Friday and Saturday both. He knew that interpreting services had not been promised for Friday, and I did not promise them.

Later that morning, I told Amanda that she did indeed have a deaf person registered for Friday, and I proposed that we leverage the budget designed to employ four professionals and four students for one day and instead employ two professionals for two days. Two pros working for $50 an hour for eight hours on Friday and nine hours on Saturday would cost $1700. I could take an honorarium of $200 for coordinating and still come in at $100 under budget.

At the very mention of providing interpreting services on Friday, however, Amanda blamed me for encouraging the deaf attendee to register for Friday and then accused me of promising him interpreting services. I assured her that I had promised nothing, and for all I knew he had registered long before I asked him if he were going (later he confirmed that he had registered for Friday way back around Thanksgiving). She told me the room was too small, was overbooked, and there would be no room for interpreters.

What’s more, she told me she was considering un–registering the deaf attendee for Friday because she would not be able to provide him with interpreters. I told her that we interpreters often fit into cramped spaces, that one of us could stand while interpreting, and the other could sit on the floor. I reasoned with her that it would be a shame to tell a deaf person he couldn’t attend a conference because there wasn’t enough room for his interpreters. She relented. She adamantly refused to let me work with another professional, but she would allow me to provide services on Friday as long as I worked with a student both Friday and Saturday. I relented. Such is the nature of negotiation and compromise.

Yet I was not satisfied, and it wasn’t about the money. I was unsatisfied with giving the client less than the best. This sort of “highly technical” conference is best suited to seasoned interpreters, so I didn’t want to use a student volunteer if I didn’t have to. We weren’t talking about an eight-interpreter deal anymore. We were talking about two interpreters working work two days. I had agreed with Amanda that I would provide all this for a total of $1050, so I was in a quandary: do I earn a normal wage and work with a student or do I see if I could get a pro to split the money with me so that we both made only about $30 per hour? I negotiated with one of the pros who had offered to work on the conference. We were each certified, licensed, experienced interpreters who had worked many “highly technical” events before. We were, if I may say so myself, a “dream team” for WordCamp. I offered to sacrifice my coordinator fee to supplement the two of us to work for 60% of our normal rate. I gave up a job Friday morning and s/he gave up a job Saturday afternoon so we could provide continuous coverage all day on both days. We were in it for the service to the deaf consumer, not for the money. I thought we had arrived at a great solution.

Then I read Amanda’s blog post.

This is what I wrote to her:

I am more interested in providing the *most* service and the *best* service to the deaf attendees than I am in making money. The way I saw it, if you could afford to give less than the best for one day, you could afford to give the best for two days. If I had “taken direction,” I would have made $650 in one day, the deaf attendees would have gotten less than the best, and they would have gotten no service on Friday. Since I advocated for *more* and *better*, I am earning only $525 for two days, the deaf get the best, and they get Friday as well as Saturday.

Call me greedy.

I thought over what a mess this had become. How uncomfortable I had felt ever since finding out that Amanda had un–registered a deaf attendee because she didn’t like her attitude. How Amanda had almost un–registered another deaf attendee because the room was too small. And, finally, how she had let loose upon the world this gross misrepresentation of what actually happened. I talked it over with colleagues. I slept on it. I discussed it with my team interpreter. We decided it would be best to remove ourselves before things got any worse.

Please, hearing readers, do not let Amanda dissuade you from providing interpreting services to the deaf. It doesn’t have to be this hard. And please, deaf readers, consider both sides of the story before you lay the blame on interpreters. (I only wrote that because ridor9th was the first commenter on Amanda’s blog post, and he said, “It is not your fault, the interpreters in Phoenix are to blame. Lately they are intimidating Deaf ppl all over Phoenix on many things” (I have no idea why he said what he said about interpreters in Phoenix, but I was hoping that other deaf people would not blame interpreters without at least hearing my side of the story first). There’s a lot we can all learn from this and still respect each other.

I would hate for the takeaway message from any blog post to be, “Don’t provide interpreters to the deaf if you can possibly avoid it.”

Edmund Berke once said, “Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it.” Take a look at John Pozadzides’ 2009 blog post “An Open-Source Look at the Cost of WordCamp Dallas” and the comments that ensue when someone suggests “If you cut out the T-shirts and interpreters, you would break even.” You will learn a lot about complying with the ADA and providing accessibility to a public event.

I hope these two bits of history will help people make future events better for all.

Edited January 22, 2011 for clarity.

Since so many people responded on my blog to the first video about this topic, “Re Oralism vs Speaking” that I embedded in a blog post, I have been responding and thinking about this issue. One thing that stands out for me is the meaning of the suffices -ism and -ist. These can simply mean “system” or “practitioner” but they also have loaded connotations of strong belief systems and prejudices– and the people who espouse such attitudes and prejudices.

My view is that there is nothing wrong with any mode of communication, be it ASL, signed English, or speaking and speechreading. Although I realize that “oralism” is a hot-button issue with many deaf people for whom it carries heavy emotional associations, I believe that if all of that emotional baggage is put aside, it can be seen that speaking and speechreading are simply ways of communicating. (To quote from William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, “…there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.”)

Far be it from me to tell oral deaf what to call themselves, but my opinion of the word “oralist” is that I would avoid it because it may carry the connotation of being a strong proponent of the oral method and being a prejudiced opponent of signing. As an interpreter, transliterator, and oral transliterator, I consider myself neither a manualist nor an oralist; I am just a person doing a job and providing the services that various deaf clients request.

If hard pressed to say what I think about speech training for children, I would have to say that, having listened to the gamut of teaching philosophies that various deaf educators espouse, I support the teaching of fully grammatical ASL first, and then English and speech second. ASL is the foundation, the native language, the “first” language; then comes English, the second language.

I know that the Code of Ethics (or Code of Professional Conduct, as it is called now) says that interpreters should “Refrain from providing counsel, advice, or personal opinions,” but that goes for interpreters while they are on the job. Interpreters off the job are people with opinions. I am expressing my opinion as someone who has studied ASL, Deaf culture, interpreting, transliterating, and oral transliterating for over 21 years and has been around many different deaf people. These are my views as an English major and word lover who analyzes words for all their meanings, both denotative and connotative.

Thanks for watching, and have a good day.

Related posts on danielgreene.com: Re Oralism vs Speaking

Sometimes I want to talk with people in person about how we talk with people on the Internet. I know I can get very “meta”– I mean, look at my website, where I sometimes blog about blogging—but I think it’s very important that we take some time to talk about how we’re talking. When I say “blogging” and “talking” I’m talking about any kind of media that you share with people on the Internet. Whatever you put out there, you are in effect “talking” to people. When you write comments, fave or “Like” something, rate something, etc., you’re talking to people. You produce and consume enough of these social media (photos, videos, stories, updates, links, comments, etc.), and you’re talking with people. But you’re not talking with them in real life, and you’re not even talking with them in real time. The communication is abstracted and asynchronous.

This evening, I went out with my husband Andy to a local brewery for something called #evfn, or East Valley Friday Night. As the description says, “Some folks calls it a tweetup. I calls it an #evfn. Remember the agenda: no agenda. Have fun. Meet people. Party on!” I’ve been to several of these, well, I calls ‘em Tweetups, and sometimes they can get pretty meta about social media. How do we share updates? Photos? Videos? Personal stuff? Work stuff? What kinds of relationships are made, bettered, or broken online? How do we bring those online relationships offline and vice versa? I love talking about that kind of stuff. In fact, no matter what I’m doing at the moment, I have an intense need to talk about it with others who are doing the same thing and are willing to talk it all out.

“Remember the agenda: no agenda.” I can accept that. I know that some of these people work in social media and Internet industries, so they might be tired of talking about their work. I understand that. People need loosely structured milieux where they can just relax, mingle, and–in the words of Auntie Mame–”Circulate, Patrick, circulate.” And sometimes, sometimes, to “circulate” is just what I want to do. But other times I want a rap group– a structured, moderated discussion. That’s what I wanted tonight.

I did get a bit of what I wanted. When I first got there, we sat around a table and talked about various things including employment, health care, spousal benefits, and how unfair it is that I have to pay a “Domestic Partnership Offset Tax” to keep Andy on my health care plan. We all talked for a while at that one table, and somehow the conversation got around to social media, though I don’t remember whether I steered it in that direction or not. People talked a bit about whether they feed their updates to Facebook from Twitter, whether they share personal updates on Facebook or keep it acceptable for business associates, whether to have a separate Twitter account for protected tweets, etc.

Then I brought up my dilemma about the photo I asked the waiter to take of us (shown above). I said, “Nowadays I could post every bit of media I create to so many channels that I sit there with something for a few minutes thinking, ‘should I post it to my Facebook personal profile, my Facebook Page, Flickr, Twitpic…??’” One person gave an answer in the form of, “This is what you do…” and I felt like it was a move to lay the question to rest. Then more people showed up and the conversation got dropped. I tried to pick it up again and the person who had answered before gave me a card and wrote on it “Read [with three underlines] convinceandconvert.com Jay Baer.” That was the end of the conversation. I felt shut down. I really can’t complain, though. I was probably “holding them hostage” on a topic they no longer wanted to talk about. I was probably the one who was out of order, trying to create an agenda when there was no agenda.

I get that people want the freedom to talk about whatever they want to talk about with whoever they want to talk about it with. I have no problem with it. What I do have a problem with is that I read and read and read but I don’t get a chance talk and talk and talk.

I need a forum for discussion– a structured, moderated, real life, real time conversation about social media. I need to listen to people’s personal experiences with social media and I need to talk about mine. I don’t want the conversation to be about how to “drive traffic” and “target markets” and “strengthen your brand.” I just want to sit around with people who create and share a lot of stuff on the Internet not because they want to make money but just because they want to share. The question for me is: how do we share things with other people. I don’t think that reading another article or attending a social media lecture or listening to a panel discussion is going to satisfy me. I want a rap group with an agenda. Anybody know of one?

[P.S. I spent two hours working on this post last night until my husband literally whined (it's our thing, we mimic our dogs) for me to come to bed at 11. I thought I clicked "Publish" but I actually clicked "Save Draft" which is just as well because I lay in bed worried about what I had written and whether it would hurt anyone's feelings or hurt my standing with the group. I just kept replaying the post over and over in my head while Adam Young's voice singing Alaska played over and over in my head. Tormented, I am. This morning, I woke up early and could not get back to sleep. Again with the blog post and song tormenting me. So I got up to look at this blog post and realized I hadn't published it. Great! Gives me more time to make it right. Now I'm sitting here on the sofa with my laptop over my legs and our dog Buxley swatting my arm with his paw to get my attention. And now it's an hour-and-a-half later and I think I might just be ready to publish this thing whether it's perfect or not and whether or not it ruffles any feathers.]

As I was saying, anybody know of a real life, real time rap group about social media? What ways do you find to have meaningful and satisfying conversations with people who are doing what you are doing and learning to do it well? Can you give me an example of how one of these conversations changed you and made your life easier?

I registered my own Facebook Page the other day and, after I got 25 fans, reserved the username danieljamesgreene (I had already secured danielgreene on June 12, 2009 for my personal profile). The reason I got a Facebook Page is that readers, students, viewers, clients, etc. wanted to Friend me on Facebook, but I only Friend family & friends on my personal profile. I felt bad denying my “customers” access to me on Facebook, yet I wanted to keep my profile a safe place for me to share personal things with the people closest to me.

I had resisted setting up a Facebook Page because I thought it might be considered “conceited” to set up my own “fan” page; however, I finally decided that there wasn’t anything wrong with creating a Page for my public life. After all, I am a “public figure” in the sense that I am a writer, performing artist, photographer, interpreter trainer, et cetera. I do create a lot of work for public consumption. My Facebook Page gives me a chance to be more accessible to people I don’t know well and feel comfortable with how much of my personal life I share with them.

Do you have a Facebook Page? Do you “Like” certain Facebook Pages? How has the Facebook Page helped the relationship between producer and consumer, performer and audience, writer and readership, etc.? How have Pages helped the relationships among fans? I am very interested in hearing about your experience with Facebook Pages as I embark on this new venture.

Abstract

Reflections on my recent experience at the RID Region V conference, the benefits of the policy of using ASL at all times during the conference (except in a few of the workshops that were interpreted), and the great contribution of deaf interpreters to the field. I also discuss my experience as a workshop presenter and my thoughts on how to make my discussions of interpreting less hearing-interpreter-centric, and more inclusive of all interpreters, especially deaf interpreters.

Transcript

Hi. My name is Daniel Greene, and to be honest with you, this is my third take on this video. I get so flustered and make so many mistakes, but I can’t retake again and again and again, so I hope the third time’s a charm.

I want to let you know about my experience at the RID Region V conference in Salt Lake City. It was awesome! I taught two workshops and that was really exciting. It was my first time presenting at a regional level. I had previously taught workshops on a local and state level, but this was my first time presenting at a regional conference. And, funnily enough, the next week I taught three workshops at NAOBI here in San Diego [Brain fart! I meant Phoenix, where I’ve lived for five-and-a-half years, not San Diego where I lived for 27 years —DG] — the National Alliance of Black Interpreters — and that was a national conference. So now I’ve taught at local, state, regional, and national levels. Anyway, it’s not just about me and my workshops. Yes, it was fun, it was great, and people came up to me and gave me tremendous feedback— this workshop is great, I love it, I’m learning a lot / benefiting from it, etc. And that’s terrific.

But what I really want to talk about is the ASL policy. The RID Region V policy was “all language here is ASL. We will use ASL at this conference.” Not “all language is ASL”– see? I told you I say things wrong. Dug! I mean “Duh!” See? I’m even fingerspelling wrong. Anyway! My point is that, “The language of this conference is ASL.” This means that people won’t speak in spoken language, they’ll speak in sign language. All of the plenary sessions were conducted in ASL. Whenever someone in the audience wanted to make a comment or ask a question — assuming that the speaker invited such participation — they would sign it. The speaker would call on them, they would stay seated, and the person on the stage interpreting for them would be a deaf interpreter. The interpreter would stand on the stage along with the speaker and copy the signing of the person in the audience. This was very helpful, because you could keep your eyes on the stage rather than having to scan the big ballroom to find out who was talking. And you wouldn’t have to worry about not being able to see the speaker or seeing only their back and not being able to see their signs. The best solution was to hire deaf interpreters to do platform mirror interpreting. And they had some fabulous deaf interpreters at that conference— fluent, top-notch, deaf interpreters. And it was really helpful to us hearing interpreters to be required to sign more.

You know, it’s easy when you’re interpreting and you can hear what a hearing person says and then process it, rehearse it, figure out how to sign it— not that you’re consciously thinking “How do I sign that?” but a part of your brain is working it out. But when you talk for yourself in sign, it’s a bit more immediate— it’s unrehearsed, spontaneous. It forces me to express myself in sign more naturally, or whatever. I really sometimes wish I had the native fluency of a deaf person. I wish I could “sign like a Deaf person.” And I aim for that although I doubt I will ever achieve it. But the point is communication.

I remember times when I would say to a deaf person, “I know I’m a little hearie who’s not fluent like you,” and several deaf people would tell me, “The point is to communicate. It doesn’t matter if you’re using PSE, ASL, or whatever, as long as you’re communicating— signing.”

And it was the same with the RID Region V conference. Yes, the conference policy was ASL, but that didn’t mean they would clamp your hands down if you didn’t sign pure ASL. It didn’t mean they would force you to instantly sign with the fluency of a culturally Deaf person who grew up using the language. No, that was not it. Besides, not all deaf people sign with equal fluency in gorgeous “perfect” ASL. So, there’s variety in all of it.

The point of it is so that deaf people know what you’re talking about. If a bunch of hearing interpreters are standing around talking (speaking English), the deaf people are left out of the conversation and it’s not fair. And, actually, nowadays more and more deaf people are interpreters. It’s not like in the past when deaf people were the clients and hearing people were the interpreters. Now it’s more integrated — hearing interpreters and deaf interpreters, HI’s and DI’s — all working together, learning together, improving together. That’s the great benefit of it. That’s big.

Oh, and in my experience as a workshop presenter, one thing I noticed about teaching was that I wanted to including the deaf participants (there were mostly hearing and a few deaf), and I thought, “how can I include them and make them feel it was equally beneficial, interesting, and entertaining?” And that’s hard. It’s a little bit of a challenge. I think most of the time if I sign and deliver the content of the workshop, all will benefit equally. But one thing I recognized in myself was that I tended to talk about the interpreting process as one of watching deaf people sign and hearing people talk. And I kept setting up deaf people and hearing people in signing space that showed the deaf person in front of my and the hearing person to my right. I guess that’s because I do a lot of video interpreting — video relay service — well, actually both VRS and VRI. Anyway, I realized that [division of hearing and deaf in signing space] is “hearing–interpreter–centric.” It would be better that I discuss the interpreting process in terms of “first speaker / second speaker; person expressing communication / person receiving communication; sender / receiver; expresser / receiver… or something.

But not deaf / hearing. Because deaf interpreters interpret between deaf and — well, not deaf, but hearing interpreters, not hearing speakers of English. So, deaf interpreters are not going between ASL and English— not spoken English anyway… well, maybe sometimes, but most of the time between hearing interpreters and deaf people. Both [of their interpreting tasks] are receiving sign and expressing sign. It is a challenge for me to think about how to talk about two interlocutors (two people who are talking to each other) and how to take one language and convey it to another. Maybe using more neutral space (from here to there and there to here), not “deaf in front of me and hearing at my side” or deaf/hearing, but more like “person A and person B” or something.

Maybe we as a profession need to think about how we discuss the interpreting process per se— not focused so much on English-to-ASL and ASL-to-English, but more like “one language to—” well, I know there are words for that, such as “Source Language (SL)” and “Target Language (TL).” Yes, we already have those words, so maybe we need to engage those words more often. Or maybe I have to do that myself as a teacher / presenter.

So, I guess that’s all. I really had fun in Salt Lake City. I did sightseeing and took lots of photos— you can look at my Flickr— I have tons of photos (eleven thousand photos!). I love taking pictures. So, I will post them today. Promise! Anyway, if you want to follow me on Twitter, it’s my name danielgreene. I’m also a member of LinkedIn, and my name on that website is danieljgreene [it's now danieljamesgreene]. Well, I enjoyed talking with you — I mean You, and thanks for your attention to this video!

Shame

I recently finished reading The Cluetrain Manifesto, and its message about people finding their voice on the Internet and how this might change issues of privacy had me listening in a certain way. One of my favorite questions one of the authors of Cluetrain asks is, “What would privacy be like if it weren’t connected to shame?”

Indeed, none of this “sexting” would be an issue if it weren’t for shame– shame that teens may or may not feel about their developing bodies, shame that adults may or may not feel looking at photos of teen bodies, and all the nebulous shame that society places upon the naked human body.

Self-expression

What if these kids aren’t ashamed of their bodies? What if, as the authors of Cluetrain assert, people gravitate toward the Internet to satisfy the age-old human desire for self-expression? Maybe these kids are just using these media to express themselves, to say, “Look at me. I exist. I’m unique. Yet I’m a lot like you.” Aren’t adults heaping shame upon these kids by charging them with felony child pornography? What’s the big deal if kids want to show each other their naked bodies? “It may lead to teen pregnancy!” Yes, it may. So may having sex without a condom and/or birth control medication. But I seriously doubt that “sexting” is bringing about a rise in teen pregnancy.

Privacy

So, what is the issue? Well, privacy is a big part of it, and it goes along with distribution. To whom are they distributing the nude photographs? Maybe to a few friends, maybe just to one. But if that one friend distributes it to others until it becomes distributed exponentially like viral Internet media, whom do we blame for the distribution? Do we blame the first sender who “should have known better” than to send anyone a nude photograph of themselves knowing that it might end up in the wrong hands? Or do we blame the subsequent distributors? What if the exact chain of distribution could be traced? Do we blame each and every one? Where does this distribution cross the line from acceptable to unacceptable? When does the private become public?

Intentionality

I faced some of these questions when I took an artistic nude photograph of myself that I wanted to share. Why did I want to share it? Well, because I liked the way I looked and I liked the way I took the photo. Was my intent to titillate? No. Was it pornography? Well, not to me. My penis wasn’t even visible, for whatever that’s worth. I questioned myself when I published the photo to my Flickr account. Should I mark it Public or Private? Should I mark it Private: Friends Only or Private: Friends & Family Only? If I marked it for Family & Friends Only, would my family and friends feel I singled them out for the viewing of this nude photo? I didn’t want that. So I used Flickr’s SafeSearch filters to flag the photo “Moderate” (“may be considered offensive by some people”). That way, only those people who have their SafeSearch browsing settings on “Moderate” (“You’re OK seeing the odd ‘artistic nude’ here or there, but that’s the limit”) will see the photo, be they friends or strangers.

Irreducibility

Socially, it seems acceptable to display yourself nude in an artistic venue as long as you’re not personally flashing people. And I’m all about filtering my content so that people see only what they’re comfortable with seeing (when it comes to nudity, that is). Yet, I am not so naïve as to think that just because I published a photo on Flickr with SafeSearch filters means that no one else will ever see it. I know that a photo on Flickr can be taken out of Flickr, indeed, taken out of context. I have to laugh at what Brian Shaler said in his Twitter bio: “Take me out of context.” (He’s since changed his bio, but that’s what it said last time I looked.) So, yes, people may take me out of context. But I am okay with that because, as one young nude man so eloquently said in an avant-garde play I once saw, “I am irreducible. My nakedness does not diminish me.”

Self-esteem

What if we lived in a world in which a person’s nakedness did not diminish them? What if it didn’t matter if teenage girls took photos of themselves in the shower and the whole world saw it? I know we don’t live in that world, but I can imagine it. I think as long as no one is forcing these kids to be photographed naked, it’s not pornography. So what if these kids are playing Doctor on their cell phones? Maybe we should spend less of our energy trying to control their use of our technology and more energy on fostering an “irreducible” self-esteem in children of all ages.

UPDATE: This blog post was published in in a textbook called Sexting in August 2011.