Daniel Greene

Category: Interpreting

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

  • Thoughts on “pre-screening” ITP candidates

    The “attitude” of an interpreter toward ASL and Deaf Culture is highly valued by the deaf consumers we serve. Hence, an ASL ITP should teach the attitudes and cultural values that are desired by deaf consumers. Some say that one way to weed out “unsuitable types” from ITP’s and from the interpreting field is to pre-screen candidates to ITP’s to check for personality suitability. I disagree with this. I believe it is prejudiced and discriminating to disallow students to enter an ITP based on some personality inventory delivered and interpreted by people who are not licensed psychologists. For that matter, even if one brought in licensed psychologists to “pre-screen” candidates, I would be offended.

    Some people claim that deaf consumers “used to” naturally select interpreters who were suitable and weed out those who are not, but “so much has changed in the last several years” that the deaf culture is no longer fulfilling this function and that it now must be taken up by college faculty. For one thing, where is the evidence that the deaf community no longer weeds out unsuitable interpreters? There are still many processes by which deaf consumers can assert control over who interprets for them. If enough deaf consumers refuse to work with an interpreter, that interpreter will not work. There are grievance processes in place. I would bet that most ITP’s don’t even have the luxury of turning away students because not that many people are clamoring to become ASL interpreters. If you teach in a community that really has that many people who want to become ASL interpreters, why not allow them into the program, teach them what they need to know, send them on their way, and let the free market sort them out? (more…)

  • Reflections on the CIT Conference

    Here are some of the things I learned, was reminded of, or thought about during the CIT conference I attended this past week:

    • I was reminded that people remember most what they learn first and last (primacy and recency). In the future, when I teach a class or a workshop, I will begin and end with exercises that engage students in active learning that is content-focused. Also, I was taught that nothing shuts down a student more than fear and anxiety. Hmm… Note to self: in the future, do not begin a class by giving out graded homework that for several students is copiously red-penned and graded lower than they might have liked, and do not end class with a discussion of the next homework assignment! 😉 Instead, begin a class session with a lively, fun exercise that engages students in active learning that is tied directly into the content matter of the class. End with a summary of what I taught them in class that day, or — better yet! — with an active learning exercise in which the students take turns summarizing (teaching each other) what they learned in class that day. Don’t bother marking up their papers with all kinds of editorial marks. If their writing is very poor, give them a poor grade and have them come to you after class if they want to talk about it. Hand out homework on a paper to them as they leave the classroom. Take care of “housekeeping” during the middle of class. Save the first and last portions of the class for the meat of the lesson. (Inspiration: “Designing and Delivering Effective, Learner-Engaged Trainings” by Len Roberson and Shannon Simon — one of the only workshops I ever gave all fives to on the RID evaluation form)

    • A conference venue for attendees who communicate in sign language must have large common areas, wide corridors, non-distracting walls (e.g. floral patterns and huge mirrors), and lighting that is bright but not glaring. Unfortunately, the Red Lion Hanalei Hotel in San Diego was not an ideal conference venue for visual-gestural communication and traffic flow!
    • Discourse analysis and genre recognition are areas that I would like to do further learning and teaching on. (more…)

  • Conference of Interpreter Trainers in San Diego

    Got ASL?

    I’m here in San Diego for the Conference of Interpreter Trainers (CIT) conference. We’re all wearing this wristband (pic above) to remind us all to communicate in ASL out of respect for the language at the center of our work and for our deaf colleagues who taught it to us and continue to teach it with us. I came here to learn more about training ASL interpreters. The first night I was here, it was exciting to see some of the grand dames of ASL interpreting, including: Sharon Neumann Solow, Betty Colonomus, Anna Witter-Merithew and Theresa Smith. I also saw Dennis Cokely, co-author of the “green books” and theorist of the “Cokely Model.” I saw a couple of more recent famous workshop presenters: Julie Simon and Robyn Dean. Past President of RID, Ben Hall, was here. I had the pleasure of interpreting his address to the RID Western Regional Conference in Boise, Idaho back in 2000.

    Of course I also saw many of my old San Diego intereting colleagues, including RID president Angela Jones and RID Region V Rep Rob Balaam (who moved to San Francicso in 1993 but used to work with me at San Diego Mesa College), Melissa Smith of Palomar College, who mentored me in theatrical interpreting back in 1994, and Jean Kelly, author of Show Me the English, who mentored me way back in 1993 and taught me how to “show ’em the English” and helped me earn my Certificate of Transliteration (CT) in 1999.

    It was a real treat to watch a magic show put on by kids from California State School for the Deaf, Riverside. They entertained us on Wednesday night. After that, it was a hoot to watch Rowdy Vision, a troupe of three deaf actors/comedians led by Jon Savage of lenois.com.

    It’s an invigorating and stimulating time! More to come later. 🙂

  • "Sign-Chi-Do" Butchers ASL, Excludes Deaf People

    A fellow interpreter tipped me off to a bizarre website the other day called signchido.com. The website is a sort of “infomercial” for an inspirational form of “moving prayer” that attempts to incorporate ASL into Tai Kwan Do Tai Chi. The woman who invented it says she is a doctor who designed Sign Chi Do to help patients “synchronize body, heart, and mind.” I suppose one could argue that anything that helps people heal is a good thing — and they may have a point — but there is something so “infomercial-ly” about this whole scheme, and I don’t believe anyone should profit from ASL at the expense of the American deaf community and their language.

    I would not take issue with Sign Chi Do if it incorporated ASL in a way that would make sense to a person who relies on ASL for communication, if all of the videos on the website were captioned, and if even one of the three “testimonial” videos featured a deaf person!

    Unfortunately, the whole scheme seems to be a concoction of someone who has co-opted the language of a people without involving the people she took the language from, and no attempt seems to have been made to reach out to the very people who created the language in the first place. It all appears to be a feel-good entertainment for hearing people who have never met a deaf person nor taken a sign language class.

    For the benefit of people who cannot hear the singing on the videos, as well as for the benefit of people who don’t know ASL, I have watched and listened to the introductory video, transcribed the song lyrics, and translated (or back-translated, if you will) the “ASL” (if you can call it that).

    (more…)

  • More about Transparency

    Below I quote from this Wikipedia entry about Telecommunications Relay Service:

    As much of the tele-relay system, particularly IP-Relay, is open for public use, it is possible for anyone with the proper equipment to place calls. This includes people who are not members of the original intended user group (i.e., persons who are deaf, hard-of-hearing, or speech-impaired). Some such users have noted its usefulness in making long-distance or local calls free of charge and without a telephone. The accessibility even to those who are not deaf, etc. has been defended by providers as a necessary evil. This is because the principle of “transparency” – the belief that the operator and the mechanics of relay should generally go as unnoticed as possible in the call – requires that Relay be as easy to use as a normal telephone, which does not require any kind of verification for hearing people to use. This decision has been defended by leaders in the deaf community, and generally retains strong support among speech and hearing-disabled users of the service.

    One of the “necessary evils” the above quotation refers to is the use of text relay services by Nigerian scam artists. Some text relay operators actually gave up their jobs in order to stop doing what made them sick and be free to break the story to the news. Here are two of those news stories that are linked to from the aforementioned Wikipedia entry:
    Con artists target phone system for deaf – Security – MSNBC.com and Overseas crooks abuse phone service for deaf | www.azstarnet.com ®

    I feel sorry for those relay operators who lost their jobs, but (more…)