I’m happy to say that a couple more of the people who read my article on Vague Language in the RID Views contacted me about coming out to their cities to present my vague language workshop. The two dates I recently added are September 24 in Virginia Beach, VA and October 15 in Milwaukee, WI.
Other Vague Language workshop dates include August 12 in Monmouth, OR; August 20 in Honolulu, HI; October 1 in Yuma, AZ; and November 10, 2012 in Minneapolis / St. Paul.
For all details, including times, locations, etc., see my calendar.
This was a song I worked on translating with a mentor in 1994, and I performed it as the finale to a one-man show I put on San Diego in 1995. I was only 28 then! If you can’t tell, I sang & signed this song simultaneously– a hard feat because what I was signing was not the same as what I was singing. I signed it as ASL as I could while singing English. Do you like it? Leave a comment to let me know what you think. Or, if you would sign it differently, post a video response. (By the way, looking back I can see that I took this song too slow, and my singing and signing were a bit over-the-top. Oh, well! 😉
Thanks to YouTuber xkorijaidenx for emailing me about her video response to YouTuber soph1951’s vlog “What Exactly Is ASL?” Soph’s vlog was inspiring and liberating for me, and moved me to create this video response. I will leave it up to people who know American Sign Language to understand this video without captions or preface. It speaks for itself.
I am excited to be presenting my Vague Language (VL) workshop at the “United We Stand” Hawaii state conference co-hosted by the Aloha State Association of the Deaf (ASAD), Hawaii Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf (HRID), and Miss Deaf Hawai`i Ambassador Program (MDHAP). The conference takes place August 19-21, 2011, in Honolulu, HI at the Pacific Beach Hotel in beautiful Waikiki. For those of you in Hawaii, or who would like to make the trip to the tropical island, follow this link to register: ASAD STATE CONFERENCE 2011 REGISTRATION FORM
The gist of my comments, for those who don’t know American Sign Language, is that we should trust the validity of the NIC (National Interpreter Certification) and the RID (Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf). This unfortunate incident of one individual’s corrupt behavior does not invalidate test scores any but 3% of test takers during the time in question; those candidates have already been notified and will have to retest. RID conducted the examination into this matter professionally in every way, and though I was frustrated myself while waiting for my test results for a long time, I now applaud RID for following a stringent protocol and maintaining secrecy about the situation until the investigation was complete. Please, consumers of interpreting services, continue to trust RID. It is a trustworthy organization. And please, fellow interpreters, do not doubt your scores. If you passed at the level you wanted, there is no need to retest. If you failed, you failed. Many of us fail tests the first time. Believe the results, learn what you need to learn to pass the test, and retake it. That’s what I did, and it worked. Again, this is a sad situation, but it has been handled. Let’s not let this get us down. We are good and RID is good. I am proud of us.
Daniel Greene 