Daniel Greene

Tag: community

  • Why shouldn’t I let my consumers do my work for me sometimes?

    Some interpreters just hate it when they’re trying to interpret from ASL to English and someone in the audience who knows sign language blurts out a word the interpreter missed or is trying to think of. I had such an interpreting experience recently, and it made me think about my willingness to let my consumers help me with my interpretation. Looking at it now, I think it is a question of humility, not laziness, but that is the wisdom of hindsight talking. Let me bring you back to the not-so-wise moment when I had a conflict with my audience.

    The deaf speaker, presenting to an audience of people who knew ASL pretty well but not fluently, fingerspelled a number I wasn’t entirely sure of. I thought I got it, but wasn’t 100% confident in my perception. I didn’t have a team interpreter to support me in voicing. Someone in the audience said the thing I wasn’t sure of, and it turned out I was right. Yet, after they did that bit of work for me, I asked the presenter to reiterate the lexical item. I was doing consecutive interpreting, and while I was watching the deaf signer, yet another audience member said the thing I wasn’t sure of. I said, “Just a moment. I’m getting this.” And then I said the thing we all thought the deaf person said, only this time I was sure of my interpretation. The dialogue between me and the audience members was quiet, and it didn’t seem to be a big deal for anyone, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it after the assignment.

    Why did I do what I did? Was it the most appropriate and effective behavior? What could I have done differently? Why didn’t I just let it go when the audience member guessed rightly? And, even if they had guessed wrongly, would it have mattered? These are the questions that nagged me this morning.

    I think I did what I did for several reasons I’m not necessarily proud of: (more…)

  • Why are interpreters deaf community members? And other questions

    Recently, I read some statements made by a hearing person who had very limited exposure to deaf people and interpreters. This person was in a position to hire interpreters to accommodate requests from deaf people. While some of her comments shocked the sensibilities inculcated in me as an interpreter, I imagine that other hearing people who know little about deaf people or interpreters share the same thoughts. I will address these sentiments to the best of my ability. Please feel free to comment if you have something else to add.

    … the deaf community (and by that I mean, the deaf, not the interpreters, etc because I believe its ridiculous that a party who benefits heavily from the community be considered a part of it)…

    First, let’s dispense with the fallacy that a party who benefits heavily from a community should not be considered a part of it. The butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker are members of their community even though they prosper by selling their wares to other community members. A Rabbi is a member of her Jewish community even though she benefits from their synagogue dues. But the interpreter requestor has a point: why are people who are not deaf considered a part of a community of those who are?

    The short answer is that hearing people are members of the deaf community when deaf people say they are. We interpreters do not presume to be members of the deaf community, but deaf people invite us to be, and we are proud to be. The butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker are not members of the bovine, flour, or iron communities because inanimate materials do not form communities as people do. Deaf people, on the other hand, are people, and their language is inseparable from them. An interpreter must, therefore, enter the deaf community in order to possess an intimate knowledge of their language and culture; otherwise, they cannot be bilingual. And more important, they will not be trusted by deaf people who rightly view hearing people as potential threats to their way of life.

    When I went to the Conference of Interpreter Trainers in San Antonio last October, I attended two presentations that spoke to the issues of interpreter identity and community membership, by Robert G. Lee and Arlene Gunderson, respectively. Allow me to share some insights I gleaned from them. (more…)

  • Offline conversations about online conversations

    Share photos on twitter with Twitpic

    Sometimes I want to talk with people in person about how we talk with people on the Internet. I know I can get very “meta”– I mean, look at my website, where I sometimes blog about blogging—but I think it’s very important that we take some time to talk about how we’re talking. When I say “blogging” and “talking” I’m talking about any kind of media that you share with people on the Internet. Whatever you put out there, you are in effect “talking” to people. When you write comments, fave or “Like” something, rate something, etc., you’re talking to people. You produce and consume enough of these social media (photos, videos, stories, updates, links, comments, etc.), and you’re talking with people. But you’re not talking with them in real life, and you’re not even talking with them in real time. The communication is abstracted and asynchronous.

    This evening, I went out with my husband Andy to a local brewery for something called #evfn, or East Valley Friday Night. As the description says, “Some folks calls it a tweetup. I calls it an #evfn. Remember the agenda: no agenda. Have fun. Meet people. Party on!” I’ve been to several of these, well, I calls ’em Tweetups, and sometimes they can get pretty meta about social media. How do we share updates? Photos? Videos? Personal stuff? Work stuff? What kinds of relationships are made, bettered, or broken online? How do we bring those online relationships offline and vice versa? I love talking about that kind of stuff. In fact, no matter what I’m doing at the moment, I have an intense need to talk about it with others who are doing the same thing and are willing to talk it all out.

    “Remember the agenda: no agenda.” I can accept that. I know that some of these people work in social media and Internet industries, so they might be tired of talking about their work. I understand that. People need loosely structured milieux where they can just relax, mingle, and–in the words of Auntie Mame–“Circulate, Patrick, circulate.” And sometimes, sometimes, to “circulate” is just what I want to do. But other times I want a rap group– a structured, moderated discussion. That’s what I wanted tonight.

    I did get a bit of what I wanted. When I first got there, we sat around a table and talked about various things including employment, health care, spousal benefits, and how unfair it is that I have to pay a “Domestic Partnership Offset Tax” to keep Andy on my health care plan. We all talked for a while at that one table, and somehow the conversation got around to social media, though I don’t remember whether I steered it in that direction or not. People talked a bit about whether they feed their updates to Facebook from Twitter, whether they share personal updates on Facebook or keep it acceptable for business associates, whether to have a separate Twitter account for protected tweets, etc.

    Then I brought up my dilemma about the photo I asked the waiter to take of us (shown above). I said, “Nowadays I could post every bit of media I create to so many channels that I sit there with something for a few minutes thinking, ‘should I post it to my Facebook personal profile, my Facebook Page, Flickr, Twitpic…??’” One person gave an answer in the form of, “This is what you do…” and I felt like it was a move to lay the question to rest. Then more people showed up and the conversation got dropped. I tried to pick it up again and the person who had answered before gave me a card and wrote on it “Read [with three underlines] convinceandconvert.com Jay Baer.” That was the end of the conversation. I felt shut down. I really can’t complain, though. I was probably “holding them hostage” on a topic they no longer wanted to talk about. I was probably the one who was out of order, trying to create an agenda when there was no agenda.

    I get that people want the freedom to talk about whatever they want to talk about with whoever they want to talk about it with. I have no problem with it. What I do have a problem with is that I read and read and read but I don’t get a chance talk and talk and talk.

    I need a forum for discussion– a structured, moderated, real life, real time conversation about social media. I need to listen to people’s personal experiences with social media and I need to talk about mine. I don’t want the conversation to be about how to “drive traffic” and “target markets” and “strengthen your brand.” I just want to sit around with people who create and share a lot of stuff on the Internet not because they want to make money but just because they want to share. The question for me is: how do we share things with other people. I don’t think that reading another article or attending a social media lecture or listening to a panel discussion is going to satisfy me. I want a rap group with an agenda. Anybody know of one?

    [P.S. I spent two hours working on this post last night until my husband literally whined (it’s our thing, we mimic our dogs) for me to come to bed at 11. I thought I clicked “Publish” but I actually clicked “Save Draft” which is just as well because I lay in bed worried about what I had written and whether it would hurt anyone’s feelings or hurt my standing with the group. I just kept replaying the post over and over in my head while Adam Young’s voice singing Alaska played over and over in my head. Tormented, I am. This morning, I woke up early and could not get back to sleep. Again with the blog post and song tormenting me. So I got up to look at this blog post and realized I hadn’t published it. Great! Gives me more time to make it right. Now I’m sitting here on the sofa with my laptop over my legs and our dog Buxley swatting my arm with his paw to get my attention. And now it’s an hour-and-a-half later and I think I might just be ready to publish this thing whether it’s perfect or not and whether or not it ruffles any feathers.]

    As I was saying, anybody know of a real life, real time rap group about social media? What ways do you find to have meaningful and satisfying conversations with people who are doing what you are doing and learning to do it well? Can you give me an example of how one of these conversations changed you and made your life easier?

  • My experience dancing with black people at the NAOBI conference

    Transcript: One more thing I must share about NAOBI— something that moved me and touched my heart. Now, I know it sounds funny to talk about “black people” and point out the differences between their culture and mine— black people’s and white people’s. It seems “politically correct” to be hush-hush about the differences between black people and white people, but I want to tell you some positive things about what’s different about black culture! And this is so neat. It seems — now, I interpreted for a full week last year at the NBDA (National Black Deaf Advocates, a deaf association) conference, and at the end of the week, we danced!— It seems to me that black people cannot get together and not dance. It seems that every conference I’ve been to — and that’s only two, but still — in my experience, when black people gather for a conference, they’ve got to dance together. And it’s so much fun! They had a DJ playing music loud, and everyone danced together— deaf people, interpreters, everyone. And they line up facing each other while people dance down the aisle, you know, like Soul Train. That’s where everyone lines up in two lines facing each other, forming an aisle, and as people move up to the front of the line, they dance down the aisle and do their own thing, show their personality, express what they’re feeling. Everyone on the sidelines cheers them on, goads them on, and roots for them. You strut down that aisle, you dance, you swing, you move your body, and you do your thing, you express yourself. Oh, it’s fun! And people are fiercely supportive.

    (more…)

  • I Don’t Represent the Deaf Community

    I was criticized by a deaf person for posting a one-minute long closed-captioned spoken video on YouTube the other day. The deaf person said that they were disappointed that I didn’t sign my video and that, being a sign language interpreter, I “represent the deaf community.” This is my response, signed and closed-captioned.