Daniel Greene

Category: Interpreting

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

  • Speak & Spell II a Successful Workshop

    My first Speak & Spell workshop went so well that people demanded more, so I put together a Speak & Spell II workshop. I improved upon the first workshop by organizing all the phonological and orthographical features by feature rather than by language. I also tweaked a few other things based on participant feedback.

    Eleven people attended the second of my phonology / orthography workshops, Speak & Spell II. It went very well. I got the workshop evaluation feedback today, and the average of all scores was 5.0, the highest rating possible.

    My next workshop, "Just What They Said: Retaining Ambiguity when Interpreting Vague Language" is next Saturday, September 26th, from 1-6:30 PM in the same location, the Desert Valleys Regional Cooperative. Thanks to Joy Marks who continues to support my workshops and allows me to use this excellent facility. This coming workshop is sponsored by the Arizona Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf. Anyone interested may register and pay for the workshop on Arizona RID’s Professional Development page.

  • My First Speak & Spell Workshop




    My Speak & Spell Workshop

    Originally uploaded by Daniel Greene

    Thanks to Joy Marks at the Desert Valleys Regional Cooperative for taking this photo and for providing the logistical support and classroom, and thanks to Joy and ACDHH for providing the promotional materials and CEU sponsorship. Thanks also to the 15 people who attended. We all had a good time and I do believed we all learned a lot- including me as I did my research in developing the workshop!

    My workshop title was Speak & Spell: How to Pronounce & Spell Foreign Names & Words, and it involved a comparative survey of the phonologies (sound systems) and orthologies (spelling conventions) of a variety of the world’s languages. I mixed lecture with interactive exercises that encouraged participants to spell, pronounce, talk about and explore international names and words. Our focus in this workshop was the mastery of foreign spelling and pronunciation in our ASL-to-English and English-to-ASL interpreting.

    I’m happy to say my workshop was a success! I’m now going to spend the next two months developing my next workshop, “Just What They Said: Retaining Ambiguity When Interpreting Vague Language” on Saturday, September 19 from noon to 5:30 PM (location TBA).

  • Upcoming Workshop: Speak-N-Spell: How to Spell & Pronounce Foreign Names & Words

    I’m teaching my next workshop at the Desert Valleys Regional Cooperative on Wednesday, July 15, from 5:30-8:30 PM. I designed this workshop to help ASL interpreters to recognize foreign names and words when they hear them so that they know how to fingerspell them, and to recognize foreign names and words when they see them fingerspelled so they know how to pronounce them. The workshop examines the phonologies of various languages and gives participants tools for further study so they can increase their knowledge of foreign spelling systems. For more info, download this flier / application form.

  • Interpreted my first Shakespeare play!

    A lot has happened since I last wrote a blog post, but this post is about how I interpreted my first Shakespeare play.

    I had been preparing to interpret The Merchant of Venice for the Southwest Shakespeare Company at the Mesa Arts Center since early March, but after I presented my workshop at the Arizona RID State Conference at the end of March, I got to work on Merchant in ernest.

    My co-interpreter, Sandra Solomon, who had already interpreted four shows for SW Shakespeare Co., met with me several times to rehearse interpreting the show. We corresponded with Missy Keast, our ASL Producer, via e-mail and met with her over videoconference to show her some of our interpreting and get her feedback, which was very beneficial. (Sandra came to my house and we sat together in front of my iMac with built-in iSight camera and used iChat to connect to Missy in Hawaii, since she also has a Mac with built in iSight and iChat. I only wish we’d been able to do this more than once.)

    In addition to meeting a few times at each other’s homes to discuss the play and rehearse, (more…)

  • After my first conference workshop

    I presented my workshop "Knowing What They’re Going to Say Before They Say It: Using Genre Recognition to Improve Your Predictive Skills" at the Arizona RID (Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf) State Conference on Saturday, March 28, 2009 from 1-4:30 PM. It was the first time I’d ever presented at a state conference, and they put me in the smallest meeting room (the Palo Verde room) at the Hilton Airport Hotel in Phoenix, Arizona.

    Can you believe that a total of 27 attendees filled this room beyond capacity? I was astounded at the turnout. I was too busy during my workshop to even think about taking pictures, but as I was leaving the space after packing up all my things, I paused to say a prayer of thanks; then I took this photo to commemorate the moment. I am hopeful to teach workshops at other conferences throughout the rest of my life. It may sound corny, (more…)