Table Of ContentDeaf Interpreters at Work
Melanie Metzger and Earl Fleetwood, General Editors
VOLUME 1 From Topic Boundaries to Omission: New Research on
Interpretation
Melanie Metzger, Steven Collins, Valerie Dively, and Risa
Shaw, Editors
VOLUME 2 Attitudes, Innuendo, and Regulators: Challenges of
Interpretation
Melanie Metzger and Earl Fleetwood, Editors
VOLUME 3 Translation, Sociolinguistic, and Consumer Issues
in Interpreting
Melanie Metzger and Earl Fleetwood, Editors
VOLUME 4 Interpreting in Legal Settings
Debra Russell and Sandra Hale, Editors
VOLUME 5 Prosodic Markers and Utterance Boundaries in American
Sign Language Interpretation
Brenda Nicodemus
VOLUME 6 Toward a Deaf Translation Norm
Christopher Stone
VOLUME 7 Interpreting in Multilingual, Multicultural Contexts
Rachel Locker McKee and Jeffrey E. Davis, Editors
VOLUME 8 Video Relay Service Interpreters: Intricacies of
Sign Language Access
Jeremy L. Brunson
VOLUME 9 Signed Language Interpreting in Brazil
Ronice Müller de Quadros, Earl Fleetwood, and Melanie
Metzger, Editors
VOLUME 10 More than Meets the Eye: Revealing the Complexities
of K–12 Interpreting
Melissa B. Smith
VOLUME 11 Deaf Interpreters at Work: International Insights
Robert Adam, Christopher Stone, Steven D. Collins, and
Melanie Metzger, Editors
Deaf Interpreters
at Work
International Insights
Robert Adam,
Christopher Stone,
Steven D. Collins, and
Melanie Metzger,
Editors
GALLAUDET UNIVERSITY PRESS
Washington, DC
Studies in Interpretation
A Series Edited by Melanie Metzger and Earl Fleetwood
Gallaudet University Press
Washington, DC 20002
http://gupress.gallaudet.edu
© 2014 by Gallaudet University
All rights reserved. Published 2014
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN 1-56368-609-0; 978-1-56368-609-2
ISSN 1545-7613
This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence
of Paper).
Contents
Preface, vi
List of Figures, x
List of Tables, xi
Deaf Interpreters: An Introduction 1
Robert Adam, Markus Aro, Juan Carlos Druetta,
Senan Dunne, and Juli af Klintberg
DI(2) = Team Interpreting 19
Stephanie Sforza
Deaf Interpreters: The Dynamics of Their Interpreting Processes 29
Eileen M. Forestal
Testing Times: Toward the Professionalization of
Deaf Interpreters in Australia 51
Karen Bontempo, Della Goswell, Patricia Levitzke-Gray,
Jemina Napier, and Linda Warby
Deaf and Hearing Interpreting Team Preparation:
A Study Using Conversation Analysis 90
Brenda Nicodemus and Marty M. Taylor
Adverbial Morphemes in Tactile Sign Language:
Deaf-Blind Interpreting 117
Steven D. Collins
Conference Interpreting and Interpreting Teams 140
Christopher Stone and Debra Russell
Contributors, 157
Index, 159
v
Preface
Although this may be the eleventh volume in the series “Studies in
Interpretation” published by Gallaudet University Press, this is the fi rst
that focuses on the research studying t he work of Deaf interpreters. While
this is by no means an exhaustive compendium of this topic, it is the fi rst
attempt that collates the work done to date and to present to the reader
the fi rst volume that seeks to present a discourse that includes: a defi ni-
tion of a Deaf interpreter, the kind of work Deaf interpreters undertake,
the ways in which Deaf interpreters work, the kind of training available
for Deaf interpreters in some places around the world, and how Deaf
interpreters work with DeafBlind people. It is hoped that this will not be
the last such volume.
The journey for many Deaf interpreters has not been an easy one. The
earliest known record of a Deaf person working as a language broker is
from an essay dated 1684 (Carty, Macready, & Sayers, 2009) telling the
story of how Matthew Pratt born in Massachusetts in 1628, the Deaf
husband of Sarah Pratt, who was born in 1640 wrote a sight “transla-
tion” of his wife’s responses to a conversation between Sarah and church
elders. However, working as a Deaf interpreter has been given little con-
sideration and only became viewed as a profession in the present era. In
many countries Deaf interpreters are not considered an essential compo-
nent of quality interpreter service provision, and experience issues of low
status and lack of professional respect.
This volume will hopefully build on some of the early work by MJ
Bienvenu and Betty Colonomos (1992), and the seminal publications
examining the work of Deaf interpreters by Patrick Boudreault (2005),
the work and training issues for Deaf interpreters by Eileen Forestal
(2005) who has fortunately agreed to be a contributor to this volume,
and the analysis of Deaf interpreters working in the television media by
Christopher Stone (2009) who is also one of the contributors as well as
an editor of this volume.
There is great scope for more work of this ilk. Deaf people are increas-
ingly working in a broader number of domains, in many countries around
the world. With more research Deaf people are increasingly given the
opportunity to receive training to work as professional Deaf interpret-
ers, and there are many other regions such as Africa and Asia where such
vi
potential for greater examination of this topic exists. In this fi rst-of-its
kind volume, 17 widely respected scholars from around the world depict
the everyday practices of Deaf interpreters in their respective nations, and
add to the growing body of knowledge relating to Deaf interpreters. In
the future there could be work that examines the domains not discussed
at length in this volume (broadcast media and the internet, weddings and
funerals, educational settings to name but a few).
Robert Adam, Markus Aro, Senan Dunne, Juan Carlos Druetta and
Julia af Klintberg who are all Deaf and from different sign language
backgrounds discuss their work and experiences as Deaf interpreters, and
offer a defi nition of a Deaf interpreter. They also present different settings
in which a Deaf interpreter can work, which range from the individual
client to an international event, using video technology.
Stephanie Sforza, a graduate of the master’s interpreting program at
Gallaudet University shares her insight into Deaf interpreters working in
deaf-deaf teams based on data collected in her thesis study. She analyses
the work done and strategies used in a team while an interpreter is “on”
and while an interpreter is “off.”
Eileen Forestal examines the processes involved with Deaf interpreters
working with the Deaf consumer, the hearing consumer and the hearing
interpreter. Based on a qualitative analysis of data, she offers an insight
into the thought process and the relationship between the team mem-
bers. She comes up with a dialogic discourse-based interaction model and
offers suggestions for a community-based model of interpreting.
Karen Bontempo, Della Goswell, Patricia Levitzke-Gray, Jemina
Napier, and Linda Warby examine the journey towards accreditation of
Deaf interpreters in Australia where, at the time, training for and accred-
itation of Deaf interpreters was not available, in spite of Deaf people
continuing to have been employed on an ad hoc basis. The Deaf Relay
Interpreter Certifi cation Project (DRICP) arose from the need for a stan-
dardized test for Deaf interpreters and included a discussion of the com-
petencies and how they would be assessed. Bontempo and her coauthors
analyze the project and offer recommendations for future action.
Brenda Nicodemus and Marty Taylor present a case study of a Deaf
interpreter and a hearing interpreter preparing for an assignment from
a conversation analysis perspective, examining the various stages using
this framework: the opening, turn taking, adjacency pairs, repairs and
closing. They conclude, having found that these two interpreters in this
study use the interactional units and rules in the conversation analysis
Preface : vii
framework, that these two colleagues use a collaborative team building
approach to this.
Steven Collins discusses the use of adverbial morphemes in the use of
tactile sign language when working with DeafBlind people. Adverbials
in sign language are usually non-manual features and Deaf interpreters
often have to use additional strategies to relay this information. Because
of the heterogeneity of the DeafBlind population, Collins discusses the
subjects in this study and explains how this work deals with categories,
including manner and degree of signs, adverbials of time, duration, fre-
quency and location, and concludes that there is a grammatical variation
between visual ASL and tactile ASL.
Christopher Stone and Debra Russell examine Deaf and nonDeaf
interpreters working in teams while conference interpreting, and explore
the strategies of working in a Deaf and nonDeaf interpreter setting in
an international setting. They draw conclusions from both fi lmed data
and from semi-structured interviews with the practitioners in this study,
which they analyze to delineate the different strategies used in these set-
tings. They conclude, highlighting that the Deaf and nonDeaf interpreter
work very much as a unit, that the dynamics of this work needs to be
examined further.
We are honored to present this volume to you, the reader, and hope
that this will be the fi rst of many opportunities for the work of Deaf inter-
preters, alone and in collaboration with Deaf and nonDeaf interpreters to
be examined, in order that this research may inform the training, accredi-
tation and continued development of Deaf interpreters around the world.
Robert Adam, Christopher Stone, Steven D. Collins, and Melanie
Metzger, Editors
Washington, DC
REFERENCES
Bienvenu, MJ., & Colonomos, B. (1992). Relay interpreting in the 90’s. In
L. Swabey (Ed.), Proceedings of the Eighth National Convention of the Con-
ference of Interpreter Trainers. N.p.: Conference of Interpreter Trainers.
Boudreault, P. (2005). Deaf interpreters. In T. Janzen (Ed.), Topics in signed
language interpreting (pp. 323–56). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Carty, B., Macready, S., & Sayers, E. E. (2009). “A grave and gracious woman”:
Deaf people and signed language in colonial New England. Sign Language
Studies, 9(3), 38.
viii : preface
Forestal, E. (2005). The emerging professionals: Deaf interpreters and their views
and experiences of training. In M. Marsharck, R. Peterson, E. A. Winston &
P. Sapere (Eds.), Sign language interpreting and interpreter education: Direc-
tions for research and practice. (pp. 235–58). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Stone, C. (2009). Towards a Deaf translation norm. Washington DC: Gallaudet
University Press.
Preface : ix
