Daniel Greene

Category: Interpreting

Posts about Interpreting/ interpretation, translating/ translation, and transliterating/ transliteration

  • 2016 Review and 2017 Preview

    I know the end of January is later than years-in-review usually come out, but since I have not blogged in a long, long time, I thought it best to share what I’ve been doing all this time and what I plan to do this year.

    One thing I have spent a lot of time on the last four years has been teaching ASL at the community college level. I tend to spend “however long it takes” on projects rather than say to myself, “I’m going to spend the next hour on this” or “I’m going to limit my work on this to three hours a week,” so I think it’s fair to say I have been spending too much time grading homework– and even maybe giving my students too much homework. I recently looked at my profile on RateMyProfessors.com to see what some of my recent students wrote, and I looked at a few other ASL instructor reviews out of curiosity. One student said of another teacher, “Plus, no homework!” I was like “whaaat??” I have a hard time believing that’s even true, but it jolted me enough to wonder what it would be like not to have any homework to grade, and it reminded me that I spend way too much time grading homework. Now, that doesn’t necessarily translate to “I make my students spend way too much time doing homework”; it means I am being typically me and spending too much time on work. I’m sure many of my students spend much less time doing their homework than I spend grading it, so honestly — as selfish as it may sound — the idea of grading less homework is more for me than for them. Suffice it to say that I spent too much of 2016 grading homework, and I plan to spend less time on that in 2017.

    I taught some workshops in 2016 — well, I taught people in workshops — and I hope to teach as many if not more in 2017. Last year, I traveled to Aberdeen, South Dakota, Flagstaff, and Tucson to teach, and I taught a local workshop and two national workshops in Phoenix, two of them being at the joint conference of the National Association of the Deaf and the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf. (You can see more in my CV).

    Which brings me to blogging. I ran by the warm-hearted Dale Boam in the hallway between sessions that the NAD-RID conference, and he said, “I miss your blogs! Share more of your insight with us!” or something to that effect. It was one of the sweetest things a reader/viewer and fellow interpreter/trainer ever said to me. It reminded me that indeed there are people out there who read my blogs, watch my vlogs, and appreciate what I have to say. I want to spend less time grading homework in 2017 and more time sharing my insight through writing and videos. I need to remember that I am a professional, not just a professor, and I owe it to myself and my colleagues to spend time in my profession reading, researching, writing, informing, discussing, and generally improving my and others’ understanding of the world.

    I also did some other fun stuff in 2016, much of which you can see in my Flickr feed, and I look forward to more adventure and travel in 2017. One thing I do feel good about, looking back on the year, is all the good times I spent with friends, and I very much look forward to doing more of that this year. I also got involved with making new friends around the world by chatting with people in English and Spanish through an app called HelloTalk. I might even visit some of them in 2017! One of my goals this year is to take a summer vacation with my husband to Spain, visiting not only Barcelona — which we went to in 2008 — but also Madrid, Seville, and Málaga. I am steadily improving my Spanish with the aim of becoming a trilingual interpreter, something I did to a very limited extent in 2016 and hope to do more of in 2017.

    Well, that was far from an exhaustive review and preview, but those are the points I wanted to hit in my first blog post of the year (and my first long-form post since November 2015, yikes!). I did some “microblogging” on my Twitter feed and a few public posts on my Facebook timeline that I might post here retroactively, but this is my first real blog post in a long time. I hope the next time I blog won’t be in another 14 months! See you soon.

  • Teaching ASL-to-English & Vocal Technique Workshop in Fargo-Moorhead

    I’m happy to be here in Fargo-Moorhead teaching an ASL-to-English interpreting & vocal technique workshop today.

  • Gratitude for work

    I’m thankful for the people I work with and for, and the pleasure of the work itself, for they make me forget the stresses of my busy week. It’s lovely how it all just goes away when I’m in the moment.

  • Paul & Tina’s Signalong: Haters gonna hate

    Paul & Tina’s Signalong: Haters gonna hate

    I am not as offended or concerned about Paul & Tina’s Signalong as some people are. I think exposure to ASL can be a good thing, regardless of who’s signing. Personal experience: the first time I was truly impressed with the beauty of ASL was at a monologue competition in 1985, when a hearing girl spoke and signed a monologue from Children of a Lesser God. I have no idea, in retrospect, how good she was at signing; all I remember is I thought it was beautiful. The fact that she spoke and signed at the same time made it accessible to me. I don’t think I would have gotten the same impression at the time if I had seen a Deaf woman delivering the same monologue, even if it were interpreted. I might have been more intimidated than entertained. I might have seen more differences than similarities. I might not have been ready for the culture shock.

    If you read the comments on Paul & Tina’s Signalong Facebook page post about taking down their donation site, you’ll see a variety of views, both supportive and critical, both from hearing and Deaf people. I think this dialogue is a good thing. The comments from d/Deaf people were more supportive than those from interpreters, though, and I think that’s telling. If Deaf signers want to be offended by Paul & Tina, and educate them about their language and culture, that is their job. It’s not ASL/English interpreters’ job to be offended for Deaf people.

    It’s not how you start, it’s how you finish

    Where you start isn’t necessarily where you end up. It’s not Paul & Tina’s job to be Deaf, and they’re not trying to be. They’re just being themselves and having fun with it. They’re not the be all, end all; they’re just doing their thing. Where people take it from there is their business. Time will tell whether future interpreters might have first thought ASL was fun by watching their videos. Eventually, we learn from Deaf people if we get that far. And if we don’t get that far, what’s the harm?

  • Encountering bigotry on interpreting jobs

    I have encountered bigotry in the workplace as an ASL-English interpreter, but I must stress that it has come from both Hearing and Deaf clients, and has not always transpired between the clients I was interpreting for at the moment.

    I usually gloss over the well-meaning paternalism of some Hearing people, especially if the interaction is brief and I sense that what is being communicated is more important than how it is being communicated. Many of the Deaf people I interpret for are familiar with this paternalism that sometimes borders on oppression, and they can handle it themselves. If they don’t handle it, it is usually because they don’t want to waste their time. One of the common errors I see among people who use interpreters is saying, “Ask/tell him/her.” This is a fairly innocent mistake. I will usually interpret it the first time, and see if the Deaf client corrects their hearing interlocutor or not. If they don’t, I usually just change the third person address to second person address in my interpretation.

    However, I have experienced situations of bigotry that created a hostile work environment for me. Here are two that stand out:

    1. A boy in a high school class bullying another boy by calling him a “faggot” and carrying on in that vein deliberately and relentlessly during study time. The Deaf client was not paying attention.
    2. A Deaf client who used old, deprecated signs for Chinese and American Indian (pantomimes of mockery, pulling the eyelids to the sides with the forefingers while bowing up and down for Chinese, and raising one hand and patting the mouth with the other for Indian) and carried on about hating “faggots” in the waiting room at a doctor’s office

    In both cases, my longterm solution was to no longer interpret for those people. My short term solutions to cases like these vary. The first situation I listed was the last straw after hearing occasional homophobia from this student over the previous few months. I chastised the bully, told the Deaf student what happened, and went to the vice-principal’s office. When neither the vice-principal nor the classroom teacher supported neither the bullied student nor me, I walked off the job with an hour to go because I was too upset to carry on. In the second situation I listed, I didn’t bother to say anything. In both cases, I let the interpreting agency who sent me know that I would no longer interpret for these people because I could not tolerate their bigotry.

    In 24 years of interpreting, my encounters with insufferable bigotry have been extremely rare. More often, what I see is paternalism among hearing people toward deaf people, and I usually let it roll off my back. I just interpret and let the clients work it out themselves.

    Yes, the people I interpret for display bigotry toward each other occasionally, but the worst bigotry I have encountered has had nothing to do with the cultures and languages I was mediating, and instead has been a kind of “environmental” bigotry I just could not stand.

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    When the interpreter faces a bigot.