Tag Archives: transliterating

Specializations vs. special skills: An interpreter’s scope and abilities

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Confused

Confused (Photo credit: CollegeDegrees360)

Having shared my first essay about settings vs. specializations with an Introduction to Interpreting class, I now realize I wasn’t clear enough the first time I wrote on the topic. One confusing aspect is that I called oral transliteration and tactile interpreting ”specializations,” which doesn’t quite jibe with the way the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf (RID) defines “specialist” and “generalist” certificates. Let me break it down:

Oral transliteration and the Oral Transliteration Certificate (OTC)

Oral transliteration is what I would call a specialization — or at least I would have called it so last week. Not everyone can mouth clearly for people who read lips (or, more accurately, “speechread”). Certainly not every spoken/signed language interpreter knows how to mouth spoken language and use natural gestures without signing or mouthing the mouth morphemes that go with signs. Nevertheless, now that I have read and thought about “specialization” the last few days, I have to call oral transliteration a “special skill.”

…special skills, specializations, and settings are three different things.

I am coming to understand that “specialization” has more do with focusing one’s scope of practice in certain settings such as educational, medical, performing arts, religious, mental health, or legal interpreting. Yes, oral transliteration for oral deaf people and tactile and close-vision interpreting for Deaf-Blind people are special skills. And, yes, having those skills may lead one into specialized settings such as Deaf-Blind conferences and social events, but it is debatable whether Deaf-Blind interpreting is a “specialization” since one can interpret for Deaf-Blind people anywhere — at the doctor’s office, in a classroom, in a courtroom, at a conference of mostly hearing people, etc. In short, interpreters may “specialize” to work in certain settings, and special skills may lead you or equip you to work in certain settings, but special skills, specialization, and settings are three different things.

The OTC is a “Generalist” certificate

However “special” the skill of oral transliteration is, RID’s OTC is a “generalist” certification. RID’s Generalist Certification pagedefines “generalist” thus:

Generalist certifications recognize professional interpreters who have met or exceeded a nationally recognized standard of minimum competence in interpreting and/or transliterating.

Yet how does a certified oral transliterator to gain entry into legal interpreting? RID goes on to say:

Individual certifications vary in their scope, so it is important to know what each credential means.

So what is the “scope” of the oral transliterator? That page on the RID website does not say. To find out how oral transliterators specialize in legal interpreting, I Googled ‘”oral transliteration” legal interpreting’ and found an Oral Transliteration Certificate (OTC) Examination Information Bulletin that simply says in 1988, RID concurrently worked on developing certification for legal interpreters and (separately) oral transliteration. There is no mention of oral transliteration in legal settings (p. 4). It also mentions that one of the benefits of membership in the Alexander Graham Bell Association (AGB) is Volta Voices, a publication that has medical and legal columns (p. 5). I suppose an oral transliterator could specialize in legal interpreting by studying legal protocol and terminology. Unlike ASL-English (and/or Spanish) interpreters, they don’t have to learn how to talk about law in any language other than English.

Oral Transliterators licensed to do legal interpreting in Arizona

How can an oral transliterator get a license to do legal interpreting in the state of Arizona? (And when I say “legal interpreting,” I don’t mean “lawful interpreting” or “interpreting legally.” I mean interpreting in judicial and law enforcement settings.) I searched the Arizona Commission for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing (ACDHH) website for “legal interpreting” and found the Initial General or Legal License Application. The section for legal interpreting shows that someone who holds an OTC can only apply for a Class D license, not a class A, B, or C. That is okay, though, because according to this video on  interpreting licensure (which has both captioning and voiceover) Class D is only for oral transliterators and Deaf interpreters (“relay” or “intermediary” interpreters who work between hearing interpreters and deaf consumers who do not communicate effectively with the hearing interpreter and vice versa). Interestingly, according to the application form, applicants for classes A, B, and C all have to sign an affidavit stating they have worked over 10,000 hours since first becoming certified, while Deaf interpreters and oral transliterators only have to have 25 hours experience of any kind past certification.

The significantly lower requirements for deaf interpreters and oral transliterators in legal settings makes me wonder why legal interpreting requires a specialist certificate of some interpreters but not of all. If it is because of the specialized vocabulary and protocols, then those would apply to deaf and oral interpreters as well. I suppose the difference is a) the rarity of deaf and oral interpreters and b) the softer language barrier between sign varieties for deaf interpreters and diction for oral interpreters than there is for interpreters who have to know how to “interpret” legalese into and from two different languages. Given what can reasonably be expected of special interpreters serving special populations, and given the lack of motivation one might have to specialize in law, I guess it is sort of “sink or swim” for these practitioners. Their incentive to acquire the skills necessary to succeed as legal specialists probably stems from a desire to do good work for others or at least a desire to make it easier on themselves. Luckily, there are law classes people can take, and there are legal interpreting workshops offered by ASL-English-Spanish interpreters that are accessible to both Deaf interpreters and oral transliterators.

Specialization — when does it end?

Why do legal interpreters need a specialist certificate when medical interpreters do not? Is not medical interpreting a specialization? Yes, it is, but RID does not have a specialist certificate for it. Is performing arts interpreting a specialization? Yes, it is, and RID used to award a specialist certificate for it (the SC:PA), but it doesn’t anymore. How about political interpreting? Religious interpreting? Academic interpreting? Mental health interpreting? Sports interpreting? Should all specializations require specialist certificates? Once we start certifying interpreters for specializations, where does it end? So far it has stopped at legal, but there is something on the horizon called the Certified Medical Interpreter (CMI) and that, my friends, is “beyond the scope of this article.“

Psst! Stay tuned. I’ve already started a draft.

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Found more interpreting & translation blogs & associations

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Loads of new links!

The focus of TerpTrans is on interpreting, translation, and contact language transliteration of spoken and signed languages around the world. We share many things in common and can learn from each other whether we are Deaf or Hearing, interpreter or translator, oral or manual. To that end, here is a list of more links from signed-spoken and spoken-spoken interpreting & translation blogs.

Blogs I recently added to my blogroll

Associations

These have been added to this blog’s link list and a new blog post: Interpreting & translation associations around the world.

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What interpreters can learn from HTML

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What could HyperText Markup Language (HTML) possibly have to teach interpreters? I learned HTML in the nineties, and I made the connection to interpreting the other day when I watched a colleague’s interpretation. The English sentence she interpreted was:

Also you can take them to a consignment shop, which– they’ll buy your clothes, which gives you a little extra money.

My colleague’s ASL interpretation was:

ALSO YOU CAN BRING TO WHAT CALLED C-O-N-S-I-G-N-M-E-N-T STORE. WHAT MEAN GIVE(I-to-them) CLOTHES? GIVE(they-to-me) MONEY. [1]

Notice that my colleague prefaced “consignment shop” with “what’s called” and she changed “which…” to “which means” (I’m back-translating so you get the idea). She effectively marked her terms so that when the listener saw “called,” they would know what came next was a term, and when they saw “which means,” they would know what came next was a definition.

This reminded me of a Definition List (DL) in HTML. Just like all elements in HTML, a DL has beginning and ending “tags” that mark the language in the container as having a semantic value, or being a certain “kind” of information; in other words, they give context to content. A DL is a list of Definition Term (DT) — Definition Description (DD) pairs. This site’s Interpreting Glossary is an example. This is the HTML code:

<dl>
<dt>ASL</dt>
<dd>(Pronounced “A-S-L.”) American Sign Language, the signed language used by deaf and hard-of-hearing people throughout North America, with the exception of Quebec.</dd>
<dt>CDI</dt>
<dd>Certified Deaf Interpreter</dd>
…
</dl>

And this is how your browser renders it:

ASL
(Pronounced “A-S-L.”) American Sign Language, the signed language used by deaf and hard-of-hearing people throughout North America, with the exception of Quebec.
CDI
Certified Deaf Interpreter
…

The opening tags in angled brackets and the closing tags in angled brackets with a slash show the beginning and end of each element. Marked-up language also shows the boundaries of semantic values; it contains discourse markers, sentence boundaries, and transitional phrases. Marked-up language helps the listener to parse the information, just as HTML helps a Web browser to parse the language on a Web page; it cues the listener to the genre so they can place it in a schema; in other words, it gives context to content. My colleague marked up her language just like HTML!

I have never heard anyone compare interpreting to HTML before, but the idea of semantic markup in interpreting/translation is not new. I remember my mentor, Jean Kelly, taught me to preface a number with what it stands for such as ADDRESS / PHONE NUMBER / COST, etc. I am calling it semantic markup or data tagging for now, but I would love to know if there’s already a term for it.

How about you? Do you appreciate semantic markup in interpretation/translation? Do you think interpreters can learn anything from HTML? As usual, all stakeholders are encouraged to comment, be they clients or practitioners, hearing or deaf, and whether they interpret, transliterate, or translate in spoken and/or signed languages.

[1] About ASL notation

Words in ALL CAPS are English glosses of ASL signs, H-Y-P-H-E-N-A-T-E-D words are fingerspelled, and lowercase words are meanings embedded within the three-dimensionality of signs, such as the directionality that creates pronomialization and dative case in “I-to-them” and “Them-to-me.” This is not the only way to notate ASL, but it is what I’m using here.

How “faithfully” or “literally” should interpreters convey signed English (or Contact Language) into spoken English when sign-to-voice interpreting? Does it make sense to use the “meaning model” or “sense theory” to receive the signed English message, drop all the mouthed, signed, and fingerspelled English words, phrases, and figures of speech, conceptualize it, and speak the “meaning” of it in English?

I tried doing consecutive interpreting lately on 1:1 consultative assignments with deaf consumers who are visiting doctors, social workers, etc. These consumers signed fluently in a mostly English word order. I tried to receive their signed English, conceptualize the message more deeply than I usually do in simultaneous transliteration, and remember some of their word choices. What I found was that the processing time helped me avoid miscues or “false starts,” but I forgot some of their wording.

Does it matter if the interpreter loses some of the deaf consumer’s word choices, turns of phrase, etc.? Or is it more important that the interpreter convey the consumer’s conceptual meaning regardless of language? I would like to hear from sign language interpreters and deaf & hearing consumers of interpreting services.

I based this discussion on sources I have read but cannot remember whom to cite anymore, as well as some I have read this morning to jog my memory and find something specific I could use as a citation:

Anukriti.net About Translation.

Vicars, B. (n.d.). American Sign Language: contact signing. On “American Sign Language University” at Lifeprint.com – A resource for ASL students and teachers. American Sign Language: Contact Signing.

Wikipedia – Language Contact. (n.d.). Retrieved from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_contact
.