Daniel Greene

Tag: ASL

American Sign Language

  • 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. 🙂

  • Would You Want a Leader Who’s Not One of You?

    As an American Sign Language interpreter, I think I have a perspective of American Deaf culture and the issues at Gallaudet University that few hearing people can grasp — and, unfortunately, the messages the average hearing person gleans from the hearing media don’t seem to be doing much to illuminate the situation. I would like to try my best today to speak as one hearing person to another about my understanding of the issues transpiring at Gallaudet University from the perspective of a person who has a fairly good understanding of both the deaf and hearing worlds.

    It seems to me that the only message hearing people are getting about the protests against Jane K. Fernandes (JKF) as the incoming president of Gallaudet is that she is “not deaf enough.” I would like you (my fellow American who can hear) to put yourself in the shoes of those deaf students and ask yourself not “is she deaf enough” but “is she one of us?” And ask yourself, would you want a leader who’s not one of you?

    Perhaps we must begin with the understanding that the main criterion for membership in the American Deaf culture is the use of American Sign Language — not one’s degree of hearing loss! There are plenty of people — particular senior citizens — who are stone deaf, but they do not use American Sign Language, and they do not identify themselves with the Deaf culture. In light of the imperative that one reach out to other users of American Sign Language and make themselves understood in that language, my opinion as someone who has been trained for many years at communicating fluently in ASL is that JKF fails this primary criterion.

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  • "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).

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  • Now You Can Closed-Caption Your Google Videos!

    Screenshot of my original captioned Google Video
    Screenshot of my captioned Google Video.

    [Update: Above is a screenshot I saved before my video went away. As of April 29, 2011, videos uploaded to Google Video will no longer play.]

    This is my first Google video, and my first video with closed captioning. Click on the little “CC” icon to watch the captions.

    I must say I’m a bit frustrated by the fact that there’s no sound in the video even though I uploaded the video with sound. I uploaded it as a QuickTime movie (.MOV). I don’t know if that made the difference or not. If anyone can help me make sure the videos I upload retain their audio track, please leave a comment. It was also a bit frustrating that the captioning did not appear as soon as Google said it was finished “processing” my video. I waited about 15-20 minutes for the captions to appear when I played the video (I kept refreshing), but it was after midnight and I really had to go to bed. In the morning, at about 6:30 AM, I watched my video again, and the captions were there.

    Anyway, this was a successful experiment from the standpoint of captioning. The one mistake I made was typing one of my time codes with a period, rather than a colon, between the minutes and seconds. This made the time code show up in the captions. I corrected the captioning text and re-uploaded it.

    For those interested in captioning, (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…)