Daniel Greene

Tag: English

  • When they talk about you, the interpreter, do-do*?

    One of the most uncomfortable things for me is when consumers talk about me while I’m interpreting. Here are some examples of things people say: (more…)

  • Why don’t we call ourselves interpreters for the Hearing?

    I mean, Hearing people are the ones who hire us, right? Hearing people need us to interpret for them because they are not fluent in sign language, and most of the time, Hearing people foot the bill. So why do we so often side with our Deaf consumers? We signed-spoken language interpreters probably all have our “Stupid Hearing People!” stories, but where would we be without them? (And remember, for the majority of us who are not CODAs, we used to be Stupid Hearing People ourselves.) Hearing people may be naïve about signed language, deafness, and Deaf culture, but most of them mean well. Hearing people who hire spoken-signed language interpreters want what we want: (more…)

  • Why I don’t tell people I’m a sign language interpreter

    Instead of telling them I’m a sign language interpreter, I like to screw with people’s heads. I love to see whether they react differently to “interpreter” as opposed to “sign language interpreter” or “interpreter for the Deaf.” When I tell people I’m an interpreter, they inevitable ask what language. I can then say, “Sign language, American Sign Language” (like “Bond, James Bond”). When I ever-so-debonairly stress “American,” they usually ask, “Oh, isn’t sign language universal?” And BAM, that’s when I tell them it’s not!

    This impresses upon them that:

    1. An interpreter is an interpreter,
    2. A signed language is a language, and
    3. American Sign Language is not the only signed language.

    What’s in a name? Oh so much.

  • Do you have to advocate for consecutive interpreting?

    https://twitter.com/#!/danielgreene/status/161961292209471488

  • Singing & Signing “Over the Rainbow” in 1995

    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! 😉