Rave Review for my Vague Language Workshop

Hi everyone. I was able to attend the workshop this past Saturday by Daniel Greene entitled, “Just What They Said: Retaining Ambiguity When Interpreting Vague Language.” This was an excellent workshop for a number of reasons and I’m thrilled that Daniel has taken it up to present this topic because it is one thing I know I have struggled with and it hasn’t been addressed enough in regards to the work we do as interpreters. There was so much that I learned.

It was all about vague language of course which has really been brought to light, I think, by video relay interpreting but certainly applies to the work we do in education. It is a fairly new topic in linguistic studies too. It is the concept that people do use vague and unspecific language in their everyday interactions and often it is for a purpose that they are being vague. This brings up the question, do we as interpreters then clean it up and make it clear, do we interrupt the conversation to get clarification, or do we just render the message as vague as it was given? Keep in mind it might be the person’s goal to be vague.

For example: a teenager might wish to cover up the truth to avoid getting in trouble; a teacher might wish to protect a student’s feeling when giving feedback about work; a person might just be trying to be polite in their use of words; a doctor might wish to be less direct about a person’s life expectancy; a counselor might purposely need to ask an open ended question without leading the client with examples. How much of this can and should an interpreter try to clarify?

I know in my training I have always been told that we need to clarify, expand, provide examples, etc and that Deaf culture is more direct. That is true to a limited degree depending on the goal of the interaction and of our consumers both hearing and Deaf. And we all know Deaf children and teenagers know how to be vague. Look at all the signs they invent at Deaf residential schools so that the adults don’t know what they’re talking about. 😉 If their goal is to be vague, then our goal as interpreter should also to be as vague. If the content isn’t there, it isn’t our role or right as interpreters to make an assumption and insert it, clarify it, or even interrupt to get clarification sometimes. That could break the natural flow of the interaction and bring focus away from their conversation to us as the interpreter. Often it is just preferable to render the message as it is and let our hearing and Deaf consumers ask for clarification. That is a part of everyday human interaction apart from interpreters. In the educational setting all the more reason to encourage this kind of interaction for self advocacy of our students and less dependence on the interpreter for clarification.

Mostly what I took from the workshop was, of course we as interpreters always want to be direct and clear when the content is there and the goal appropriate, which is most of the time hopefully, but also to recognize that at times it is okay just to render the message as it is, may it be vague or indirect, but true to the goals of the speaker and the way in which they said it. We don’t necessarily always need to know all the details to interpret just what was said and sometimes this accomplishes exactly the goals of the interaction. There is more detail to what we discussed at the workshop but this is the gist of it. It was great and it was conducted in ASL which was a bonus too. It really was a terrific workshop.