Daniel Greene

Tag: Voicing with Valor

  • Interpreting or Transliterating?

    In previous installments, I’ve written about the importance of matching the Deaf speaker’s mastery of language, vocabulary, and register, especially when it comes to our ability to produce spoken English that is worthy of that speaker’s signed language. In my last, somewhat “controversial,” column, I wrote about the dilemmas we must face as interpreters when…

  • Correcting the Message

    A while ago, a colleague of mine made an interesting interpreting choice that got me to thinking about how much we should “correct” the signed messages we voice in English. As my team person was voicing, the deaf client misused an English idiom, and my team person voiced the English idiom in the same “broken”…

  • Befriending Phonemes

    In my first column, back in June 1998, I wrote about how we as sign language interpreters for the Deaf are also “spoken language interpreters for the Hearing.” I emphasized the importance of brushing up on our English so that we could do justice to our clients—both Deaf and Hearing—when we voice-interpret. But is English…

  • Making Sense of Tenses

    “If I was you, I wouldn’t have went there and did that.” “This agency is ran by the Deaf.” “I move that the board purchases a new computer.” “It is mandatory that she is on time, and that she has fun and does a good job.” Do the above phrases sound right to you? If…

  • Finding Your Voice

    Just as your body is the instrument you use to interpret from English to American Sign Language, your voice is the instrument you use to interpret from American Sign Language to English. This article is about learning to tune that instrument so that you may play it like a virtuoso when giving voice to a…