Latest / Found in Interpretation Podcast / Ep. 66 - Sign Language Interpretation with Sharon Neumann Solow — History, Training & the Five Steps

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Ep. 66 - Sign Language Interpretation with Sharon Neumann Solow — History, Training & the Five Steps · Found in Interpretation Podcast

0:00
What about for a language agency?
0:03
I wanna know bro. Language Agency.
0:06
Like this and then. Yes.
0:08
And then this which is gesturing, signing and then this
0:12
is translation in gesture, not, I mean in just, you know, not in
0:16
American Sign Language. So interpretation in gesture is
0:22
a flat hand that turns over. On the other hand, same hand,
0:25
but it just turns over. I just saw bread and butter.
0:28
Well, it's the sign for cooking in American Sign Language.
0:31
There, Yeah, you even know you're an ASL interpreter and
0:36
that's why. All in international, not in
0:41
ASL. Hello, hello and welcome to
0:45
another episode of Found in Interpretation podcast, the
0:48
podcast that talks about translation, interpretation,
0:52
sign language interpretation. Spoiler alert.
0:55
Anyway, I'm here with Brian. Brian, how you doing?
0:57
I'm doing great and we are also here with a breath of fresh air.
1:01
Sharon Newman solo. How are you, Sharon?
1:05
Fabulous. Thank you.
1:06
I'm honored to be here. Awesome.
1:08
Alright everyone, don't forget like, share, subscribe, click on
1:12
that button. Most of you watch these videos,
1:14
but don't click on the like button.
1:16
We want to be found by the algorithm.
1:18
It's very important. All right, let's kick it.
1:32
I think that we can start with the basics.
1:35
You 60 years, that's a lot of time in this profession.
1:40
Can you explain how someone that is looks as young as you has 60
1:44
years of experience? Thank you.
1:48
Thank you. I started very young.
1:52
I started at 15 interpreting 4 of all things.
1:56
They took me out of my last period of high school to go over
1:59
to the university to interpret for a doctoral program.
2:02
So I was very well prepared for that, as you can imagine.
2:06
And language combination I don't know, it's already ASL.
2:10
Already ASL OK English, right? So there were doctoral students
2:16
at the University of Arizona who were deaf, and it was one of the
2:21
earliest universities outside of Gallaudet University for deaf.
2:26
That's for deaf students. One of the earlier places that
2:30
had deaf students in a doctoral program and they yanked me out
2:36
of the community and threw me in there.
2:39
Wow. How did that happen?
2:42
Well, my parents are deaf and so my parents were at a gathering
2:47
of deaf people and these one of those doctoral students was
2:52
there and said we need interpreters.
2:54
Do any of you have children who can sign?
2:57
And because the profession was just starting for sign language
3:03
interpreters to be considered professional.
3:05
And so there wasn't an organization or anything of that
3:08
sort really very active yet. And my father being very proud
3:13
of his daughter, said my daughter sign.
3:17
And thus was born the interpreting profession for me.
3:21
And I went to the university to interpret and I was completely
3:27
inadequate because the, it was doctoral work and I was 15 years
3:32
old. But the people there, the deaf
3:36
students and the, there was one hearing student, one not deaf
3:40
student, you know, who had signed all his life as well.
3:45
And he was in the class and he supported me and the students
3:48
supported me and they taught me how to interpret 1 to one
3:52
coaching. That's amazing.
3:56
Baptism of fire, yeah. Absolutely.
3:59
This is the story of my life. Everything along the way has
4:02
been because in my profession there was not much of A history
4:05
or a a protocol. There was, there was very little
4:09
training. There was no training when I
4:11
started. And so when I started, I was one
4:14
of the first professional interpreters.
4:16
But then I was one of the first trainers.
4:18
And you know, my whole life has been, oh, nobody knows how to do
4:21
this. OK, I'll try.
4:24
Wow, I like. That now you said that your
4:28
parents, you were part of their daughters, you have other
4:33
siblings and did they follow along the same vein or no?
4:37
Yeah, I have one sister and is also an ASL English interpreter
4:43
and she was first a teacher for many years of deaf children, but
4:50
then she's now, she's been for many years now at an
4:53
interpreter. She from the start as well, but
4:57
I just mean her specialization became teaching children and
5:02
then she came back to full time interpreting.
5:05
Them. And you're, you, you, you said
5:10
English sign language interpretation.
5:13
So from what you're saying, and by the way, I'm completely new
5:18
to this, I have, I don't know anything about ASL.
5:21
So you're saying basically that there are several languages in
5:27
ASL? ASL is American Sign Language.
5:32
Alright, ASL means American Sign Language, alright?
5:36
And the odd thing, the ironic thing, is British Sign Language.
5:40
So we share, relatively speaking, we share a spoken
5:43
language. L is completely different than
5:48
no. Because of the accent.
5:50
The two yes, the two languages grew from very different roots.
5:55
The two signed languages grew from very different roots Find
6:01
American Sign Language is grew from at least one of the greater
6:05
influences was French Sign Language and I I'm not sure
6:09
where. Sorry FSL.
6:12
OK. Well, it's hard to get it now.
6:15
Long to see 12th, I can't say. It but yeah, yeah.
6:21
Do you have a Lesquin Quebec for Canadian?
6:25
Yes. Right.
6:26
So we had to do it our own little thing too, right?
6:29
Of course, you have to be unique.
6:30
And Quebec. Speaking portion of Canada has a
6:35
strong it's ASL in Canada as well with some dialectal
6:41
differentiation, but not much. And so it didn't grow out of the
6:48
British ASL system, British Sign Language system, it grew out of
6:53
the American and French language system.
6:56
Now for human languages, we can take it their roots into in.
7:02
How do you call it Indo whatever like like I had a tip of my
7:07
tongue just as I was about to ask the question, but in the
7:10
European languages could they call?
7:12
It right? Right.
7:13
So there are there are these roots Indo European languages
7:16
and then over time you can see different branches.
7:19
So about, let's say, let's take ASL, is there any root base or
7:26
is it just that people over time started giving the same gesture
7:32
for certain things and things evolved over time and then it
7:35
becomes structured? What's the history behind it?
7:38
Well. And I don't know the, the very,
7:42
very ancient roots, but I can tell you about the roots from
7:47
French Sign Language. An educator in France by the
7:53
name of Laurent Claire Uh was discovered by an American man
8:02
who was trying to figure out how to establish education for deaf
8:06
children in the United States. He went to Europe.
8:09
He failed to find a program that would share their information
8:13
with him in in England, thus the lack of that route and by the
8:18
time he found someone, it was in France.
8:21
He found Lauren Claire and Laurent.
8:23
Claire agreed to join him and come back to the US and start an
8:30
educational program for deaf children.
8:33
On the long ship voyage back they kind of taught each other
8:40
English and ASL and French sailing LSQ.
8:44
So Gallaudet taught him some English.
8:47
He taught Gallaudet some French Sign Language when they came to
8:52
the US, then they started this these programs and the roots
8:58
were in French Sign Language. So there are certain things that
9:05
I've been told our sort of you can tell that they're French,
9:08
like the sign for to see what is the word in French for C.
9:15
So this is a V. And I swear, I thought it was
9:18
someone holding a cigarette. But yeah, the French, you know.
9:24
The V seems to have come from French, the French word by
9:29
chance, because the spoken language that surrounds the
9:32
signed language has some influence on it in our
9:35
experience, because the majority of the people around that deaf
9:40
community are people who can speak the spoken language, so.
9:45
Now I have a question. So if somebody from England and
9:50
someone from France each had their own interpreter for sign
9:54
language, would they be able to understand each other because of
9:57
the similarities between British Sign Language and French Sign
10:00
Language? British and Sign language.
10:02
British and French are not similar.
10:05
American and Sign Language have some similarities.
10:08
But. It's like many languages, here's
10:11
a similar route and then they both grow in different
10:15
directions. So now I would say that they're
10:19
not easily understandable from from.
10:24
Anyone. Another.
10:25
Yeah. However, deaf people so so
10:30
another piece that's different about spoken language
10:33
interpreters lives and signed language interpreters lives the
10:38
people we community. One group of people we serve are
10:42
the deaf people, right? And deaf people have an immense
10:46
amount of experience not being understood and immense of amount
10:52
of experience not understanding. So they have often, many of them
10:57
have practiced these incredible skills at sussing things out and
11:03
figuring things out and communicating anyway.
11:06
So they have incredible, not everyone of course, but so many
11:12
deaf people I know have incredible gestural skills so
11:16
they can help a person on the street understand something
11:21
without words. And so there's this middle
11:24
ground that deaf people can meet that, which is kind of using
11:30
iconic signs and gestures, and then they find a sort of moment
11:36
of communication. Also, they learn each other's
11:40
language just like we learn each other spoken languages.
11:46
But there so when you're saying that they have different roots,
11:54
for instance, to see where in Francois you point to your
11:58
basically you point to your eye. Don't most languages, at least
12:04
for basic things as that we all have as humans, forget concepts
12:10
for concepts. I can understand that concepts
12:13
can take their their their path of their own.
12:15
But things like to see, to eat, to hear.
12:19
Even if I don't know anything about ASL, if I want to eat, I
12:22
will do something like that. And maybe that's not the
12:24
American way of doing things, but that's the Allen Wade who
12:27
just made it up. Don't all sign languages have
12:31
that kind of similarity? Yes, there's, that's, that's the
12:36
sort of iconic category. So there are many signs.
12:41
One of my colleagues describes it very well, she said.
12:46
Signs don't always look like what they are, but they almost
12:50
never don't look like what they're not.
12:53
So if I said to you, I'm seeing that and use this gesture, you
12:59
would think I was out of my mind and I would be you.
13:02
Yeah, I wouldn't use the. So we don't use gestures or
13:07
signs that that look ridiculously unrelated, like
13:11
opposite or different from what they are, but they don't always
13:14
look like what they are. So to give you a quick example,
13:18
this is the sign for tree in. America, just for people who are
13:22
just in the audio version, can you describe what you're doing
13:25
at the same time? Time for tree in American Sign
13:28
Language has the forearm resting on a on the palm of your other
13:33
hand, a hand shaped like the number 5, and the hand kind of
13:39
shakes, and that's the sign for. Tree left or right hand is.
13:44
My dominant hand is the tree is the one with the five hand and
13:50
the arm up, and my non dominant hand is what we call the base
13:53
hand, the hand that my elbow is resting on.
13:56
So for you, if you're right-handed, the same for
14:00
left-handed people it would be. Left.
14:03
So it doesn't change the meaning for the person watching me.
14:05
That's right. So that's the sign our tree of
14:08
of sort of A5 hand shape shaking above, you know, and it, it's
14:14
quite iconic. It looks like a tree.
14:17
Yeah, the wind rustling through the leaves, yeah.
14:19
That's right. The forearms, the trunk, and
14:21
then the five is the branches and the leaves.
14:24
And when we shake it a bit, it looks like leaves shaking.
14:27
However, in China, the sign for at least one of the signs that I
14:33
was told for tree represents the trunk.
14:36
So if you think of two hands that are sort of bent into, if
14:41
you would think of it like a broad sea hand shaped like the
14:44
letter C, and then those two hands face each other and move
14:49
upward. So you can picture that I'm
14:51
running my hands up a trunk of a tree.
14:53
OK. That's the sign for tree in one
14:59
of China. Well, they don't look at all
15:03
alike, but are tied to the physical characteristics of a
15:08
tree. There's a constant in terms of
15:10
concept you can sort of imagine. Right, yeah.
15:15
But yeah, you have things that are more abstract than those
15:19
things may or may not have any connection to a visualize table
15:24
thing. So for example, truth, you know,
15:30
it doesn't have a visual meaning.
15:37
Truth is, I, I hate to do this, but it there's a sign of it,
15:42
your index finger coming away from your mouth and then two
15:47
fingers and then the middle finger, the middle finger joins
15:50
it. So there's like 2 fingers
15:52
together and then they push across the palm of the other
15:55
hand. That's truth.
15:58
Well, there's there's nothing about that that I would call
16:01
iconic. It's just no correct meaning an
16:05
abstract concept. Just before we move on maybe
16:09
through to the next thing, I have one more question.
16:11
I'm sorry, but it's so it's so fascinating, but OK.
16:14
Sometimes when people don't know anything about sign language and
16:18
you see people on TV at the corner or somewhere, some people
16:22
are doing the sign language. Some comedian late night comics
16:26
will say, oh, that looks really funny.
16:28
And then they'll start to make fun of it.
16:30
And sometimes in the audience we're like, is that made-up or
16:35
is it true? So can you tell me if what you
16:38
see most of the time in a press conference or in any other
16:41
situation are there and now is there, are there really
16:46
professionals or sometimes some people are just making things
16:49
up? Well, excellent question and sad
16:52
answer. Most the happy answer is most of
16:55
the time from everything I've watched, they're real.
17:00
Their actual professional interpreters doing a bang up
17:04
challenging job. But we know of 1 case.
17:09
Do you remember when Obama was at Mandelas?
17:13
No. Yeah.
17:15
Funeral, Yeah. That's the one.
17:19
That's the one. That guy was hearing voices and
17:25
imagined himself to be an interpreter.
17:28
I don't know. I heard all kinds of stories,
17:30
but that was fake, FAKE, false, and wrong.
17:35
But most of the time, what you see is accurate.
17:38
I've seen a few examples of people who for the sake of
17:44
appearances, pretended to have an interpreter, but it's very
17:48
rare. And then there was the crazy
17:50
guy, which I haven't heard a lot those.
17:53
Yeah, it's a shame that it was such a high stakes thing that
17:57
the whole world was watching and then, yeah, that happened.
18:00
You know, there was something good that grew out of that.
18:04
There was a, a, It provided a huge argument for why we want to
18:10
have certified interpreters and interpreters who have been
18:16
vetted rather than just, oh, you can sign, come here and be an
18:21
interpreter. And that's, that's my life
18:24
growing up, you know, when I was young.
18:26
But we're beyond that. We now have certification, we
18:29
now have professionalization, we have national and international
18:33
organizations that can help people determine the
18:35
qualifications. And so next time nobody gets on
18:40
that stage without a some sort of certificate or something.
18:44
Absolutely. And you like basically caught
18:47
the bug at a young age. And have you, you've been
18:50
helping with this whole process, right?
18:53
Like with educating people and with your books that you've
18:56
published. Like you've done so much for the
18:58
community. Helping in participating. 60
19:04
years of experience, right? Yeah, yeah.
19:08
And when you come in with that, you know, into a profession that
19:11
has no history. I mean, we didn't.
19:15
This is part of my my later learning, not recent, but after
19:21
a while, when I was starting, I just, I suddenly, I realized
19:25
there's a whole community, there's an entire profession of
19:28
spoken language interpreters who've already done some of this
19:32
work, some of this development. And we started as if we were
19:37
fresh from nothing, but we weren't.
19:39
We shouldn't have. We should have tied ourselves
19:42
with the spoken language interpreting world earlier.
19:44
We have now, but. What do you mean by that?
19:48
Well, when we first started, we just made it up.
19:51
We just created it. Like, how will we teach
19:54
interpreters? How will we develop as
19:56
interpreters? We didn't have, I don't mean we
19:59
were fully ridiculously blinded to the idea of spoken language
20:04
interpreters, but I just mean through my career, I learned how
20:08
important it was to collaborate with people who have this shared
20:13
profession. And spoken language interpreters
20:16
and sign language interpreters have a lot.
20:19
And in the early days, I would say we didn't do a lot of
20:24
accessing of one another. I find that sometimes, some ways
20:29
that's still the case. When I in Canada, I own an
20:34
interpretation agency and I don't hire ASL interpreters.
20:38
I refer them to an agency that specializes in that.
20:41
So I still find that there's a little bit of a silo in Canada
20:45
anyways. Do you find that in the United
20:47
States as well, or? There are good reasons and bad
20:51
reasons for those silos. The good reason is because I
20:56
think it takes a bit of a learning curve for non sign
21:01
language interpreter agencies or individuals to learn all the
21:09
nuances of what is required for ASL interpreting.
21:13
There are some things that make us unique and make our
21:17
populations unique. The bad part about that is
21:20
there's so much we can learn from each other and we have so
21:23
much in common, especially regarding the mental processing.
21:28
You know what it is we actually do.
21:31
And so that kind of soloing is, is wasting resources.
21:36
But I do think that almost every time when I work for a spoken
21:42
language interpreting agency, I have to help them understand our
21:47
process and how we work. Because for one thing, these are
21:52
my hands, are my articulators for half of the work I do,
21:56
right? Maybe more than half of the work
21:58
I do depends on the day and whose communicating in what
22:02
form, if who, maybe one person's talking the whole time and the
22:06
deaf person's just listening and I'm for the whole time.
22:10
And these articulators can wear out.
22:13
So you can get tunnel, you can get cramping, you can get
22:17
problems right if you don't rest your hands regularly.
22:22
And we are stricter about that from my experience.
22:25
We're stricter about working in short intervals with the Co
22:30
interpreter to switch in and out.
22:33
We're very strict about that compared to some of my spoken
22:37
language colleagues in a variety of environments where they go
22:40
for longer. Usually for a conference you do
22:44
20 to 30 minutes for a simultaneous that's is that more
22:47
or less what you guys? More or less what we do, OK, but
22:50
I'd say we we are on the shorter side, 15 to 20.
22:55
Oh, OK, 15 to 20. Wow.
22:56
Because it gets. Hard on the.
22:58
Ends. And.
23:00
Hard to break or shift when it's natural, not just OK, 15
23:06
minutes, I'm in, you know, really work it out.
23:09
So sometimes we'll go as long as 25 minutes, thirty minutes.
23:13
More than likely we'll go about 15 to 20.
23:16
They're like a wrestling tag team.
23:18
So like whenever you see your part, we're getting a little
23:20
tired, you tag out. Now another question, do you
23:25
have like a *** in spoken interpretation?
23:27
We have consecutive interpretation.
23:29
We have simultaneous interpretation.
23:30
Is ASL strictly simultaneous? No, OK.
23:35
Misconception I think is that because we don't have the
23:40
auditory confusion that we can just be simultaneous because,
23:46
you know, there's no overlap of sound.
23:50
Whereas if you're in a room and you're not in a booth or you
23:54
know, if you don't have the equipment, it's really hard to
23:57
hear from people in the room. So you use consecutive sometimes
24:01
just for that reason and for many other reasons.
24:04
But I just mean, let's take that example.
24:07
Spoken language interpreters would have, I mean, people using
24:10
spoken language interpreters would have difficulty listening.
24:13
So they were consecutively in some environment just for that
24:17
reason. Sign language interpreters, that
24:19
doesn't happen. We're not making sounds while
24:22
we're signing. So it seems like people think we
24:26
can just go simultaneous all the time.
24:29
But the truth is consecutive as you know has tremendous
24:33
advantages for accuracy and clarity of grammatical
24:39
structures for other things, for one thing.
24:41
So when we can, we do encourage people to use consecutive.
24:47
And I think it's the same in all of our, I'm not sure.
24:51
But in all of our communities of interpreters when we interpret
24:55
for witness testimony, we, we are required to do consecutive
25:00
interpretation. And so that's one example where
25:04
we always use consecutive and then others.
25:08
It just depends on the environment and what the goals
25:12
are and so forth. But we do use consecutive, I
25:15
would say not as much as we should.
25:18
OK. And is there always a good
25:21
amount of work? Is it difficult to do you go
25:24
through agencies how, how, how is like up?
25:29
And there's, I guess there's are there any high season, low
25:33
season as well? Yeah, well, I'll tell you the
25:38
answer is yes. Yes.
25:41
Yes to all. Yes, There are high seasons, low
25:44
seasons, too much work, too little work.
25:47
Is it challenging? Yes.
25:49
Is it easy? Yes.
25:50
To get jobs? I mean, and here's the thing.
25:52
Because because we operate with a community that has rights
25:58
under the Americans with Disabilities Act and in other
26:02
countries there are some other laws that are similar.
26:05
We have work that most spoken in spoken language interpreters
26:10
don't have. So a huge, I would say a very
26:14
significant number of signed language interpreters worked in
26:19
K through 12 educational settings.
26:23
Oht unheard of in most other language use interpreters,
26:28
right, right. But they're interpreting for
26:30
children who are going to school in a community, in a school that
26:34
has not deaf children, almost all children who can hear.
26:41
And then they're in there. We call that mainstreaming.
26:44
So they're, and often they're the only student.
26:48
Sometimes there is a small pod, a small community of deaf
26:52
children and they have maybe a separate classroom, but then
26:55
they go into the regular classrooms for this class or
26:59
that, I don't know. But the point is, we have a lot
27:02
of interpreters who work in that very unique environment.
27:08
Yeah, that sounds amazing. Oh, go ahead.
27:12
Oh, I mean, and the, and the interpreters that work in this
27:16
field, is it a bit the same story as yours, which is you
27:20
have a family like your parents were deaf and then because of
27:24
that, little by little you learned and then you went on to
27:27
make it a career. Just like, for instance, Brian
27:30
and I, we grew up trilingual and today we work basically as
27:34
interpreters. So it seemed like a very natural
27:37
career to have because of our family history.
27:41
There's that. There is that population, yes,
27:44
we have quite a few people who most, well, who have a deaf
27:50
parent or more, quite a number who have a deaf sibling or more
27:56
and not deaf parents, but some people who have both siblings
28:01
and parent who are deaf. But now we have such a high need
28:06
and there's a lot of training programs for ASL English
28:11
interpreters. And so we have, um, many people
28:17
who discovered in high school that they were interested or who
28:22
had a neighbor who was deaf and they learned how to sign or
28:26
they, you know, they, they came to this the way anybody comes to
28:31
a new career, you know, they just discover it and they go,
28:33
oh, I'll study that. And so we have the range of
28:39
native speakers who then or sometimes we call them heritage
28:43
speakers who then chose to become interpreters.
28:47
And then we have non-native speakers, signers who came in
28:52
and learned ASL and are then. A letter at a later age.
28:57
At a later age, that's. Right, Sir, we all have so many
29:03
questions. Go ahead.
29:06
All right, Sharon, next one. So my next question is so in, in
29:15
language interpretation, we have an international body IE that
29:18
regulates things for everyone in the world.
29:22
And then after that you get the countries that have their own
29:25
like the American Translators Association.
29:27
And then you have in our case provincial, like for example
29:31
Atiak in Quebec or ATIO and in Ontario.
29:34
Do you have those same organizations that regulate the
29:38
profession internationally, nationally and and I guess
29:41
statewide? Yes, we have um Nash, a
29:48
worldwide, the a worldwide organization of sign language
29:53
interpreters. And then we have a European
29:56
organization of sign language interpreters.
29:59
And then I'm sure there are others, but like Asian and
30:04
African, I don't know. And then, but we have in the
30:07
United States, we have the Registry of Interpreters for the
30:11
Deaf, which is the very first organization in this country.
30:15
And that's why it has such a peculiar name.
30:19
We registry instead of association I guess.
30:22
Registry and for the deaf, we would never the title like that.
30:26
You know, we're not interpreters for deaf people.
30:29
We're interpreters between ASL users and English users in.
30:35
So it's it's very old fashioned label, but it got built into a
30:39
lot of laws and so we can't change it.
30:41
So forgive us terrible name, but that's the organization and they
30:46
were our national organization was responsible for pulling
30:50
together certification testing. And now they're trying to sort
30:54
of separate that out and there's going to be a new or there is
30:57
not going to be, there is a new organization that works in
31:01
tandem with the registry of interpreters to build reasonable
31:06
tests and ballot tests and so forth.
31:09
And then we have state licensing and certification programs.
31:16
So it yeah, it, it varies, but we have a system that that the
31:24
clearest 1 is the national one. And then from that, some of the
31:29
states have some very robust programs and certification
31:33
systems and some have, you know, did you get a signature from
31:37
three people you're in, you know, it, it really varies on
31:43
the people, but in the local level, but at the national
31:46
level, and there's one state, Texas, that has an incredible
31:51
system, the Bureau of Education, Bureau of evaluate Bureau
31:56
evaluating interpreters be EI and they have a very robust
32:00
assessment system and a very reliable certification system.
32:05
So the whole country, many other states are borrowing that and
32:10
California is accepting for example there legal
32:14
certification because our national legal certification has
32:18
not been active for quite a while and we need more
32:21
interpreters in the legal environment.
32:24
You also wrote a book recently, right?
32:28
Several books. Several books, but the one
32:30
reason one recent book. Can you tell us more about it
32:33
and why you wrote it? I would love to.
32:36
I'm very excited about it. So when I was, I've been writing
32:41
this book. I'm going to show it to you
32:43
because I love my book. I'm very happy with it.
32:46
I wrote this. I started writing this book in
32:51
ready 1980. Four.
32:55
It took 40 years to get this silly book done, Not because
33:01
it's such a complicated book, but because I think I just
33:04
thought it needed more. It needed more, it needed more.
33:06
And I never finished. Sounds like Game of Thrones.
33:12
Is it called the Winds of Winter?
33:16
ASL Winter. Yeah, in 1984, I went to Italy
33:22
to train interpreters and um, while I and I, I, my favorite
33:29
story for some reason is that this wonderful friend calls from
33:33
Italy and she says I want you to come.
33:36
I had been teaching in Europe, teaching the principles, kinds
33:41
of courses, you know, professionalism and ethics and
33:45
that kind of thing. And she said I want you to come
33:48
and teach a whole week on AS on Italian sign to English and
33:53
another week on English to it, Italian side to Italian and then
33:58
another week Italian to Italian sign.
34:02
OK. LS.
34:05
How do you teach someone who already speak with their hands
34:07
how to do same language? I said, I think you forgot.
34:14
I know speak at the Italian I know sign of the lease.
34:18
LIS is Italian sign language more sign of the lease.
34:22
I was being very foolish and she said, I know, but you'll figure
34:26
it out. And I wanted to go to Italy.
34:29
I love going there. And so I said, hey, so I went
34:32
and here's what happened. She, my colleague, sat with her
34:36
head right here and interpreted simultaneously into my ear so
34:41
that I could understand what the source text was and what the
34:46
what the she knew both lease and Italian both.
34:51
So she was helping me see what they chose to do in their
34:55
interpretation and what their source text was.
34:58
But then on top of that, I was just, you know, kind of not
35:04
paying attention to words, but watching the signed version of
35:10
this and listening to the cadence of the spoken important
35:17
and just paying attention to the to the.
35:20
I guess what I want to say is the bigger picture because what
35:24
I realized was I was looking prior to that as an educator, I
35:29
was looking at, did you pronounce that perfectly right?
35:32
Did you hit every note? But I wasn't looking enough at
35:36
the which, by the way, those are important, but I wasn't looking
35:40
enough at the bigger picture. And what I learned in Italy by
35:45
being forced to look at the bigger picture because I didn't
35:47
know all the little, you know, nuances.
35:50
You should sign it this way or say it this way.
35:53
Was these five things, the things I'm calling the five
35:56
steps came out into my sort of consciousness.
36:01
And what happened was I watched and listened and I noticed that
36:07
people were the interpreters in this group who were brilliant,
36:11
by the way, but not trained. And they were getting trained.
36:15
They were where they fell down, you know where things weren't
36:20
working was they weren't processing long enough or deeply
36:25
enough. They weren't creating enough
36:27
meaning in their own heads to put it in the second language.
36:31
The second thing was that they weren't doing that because I
36:34
think they weren't relying and comfortable with their memory,
36:37
so they didn't. They needed to develop their
36:39
memory skills. And thirdly, they needed to help
36:45
the consumer understand how one thought was tied to the next.
36:51
So cohesion, prosody, that kind of thing.
36:54
Same concepts that we have intervened in simultaneous
36:57
interpretation. In every field but these, these
37:01
came out to me as even more important.
37:03
It's not that we didn't know these things, but they became
37:06
super important. And then the 4th 1 is very much
37:10
tied to sign language interpreters, and that is around
37:13
structuring space. Because when we set up things
37:17
like opposites, we put one like one thing on one side of our
37:22
body and the other on the other side of our body.
37:25
For example, to say the Republicans versus the Democrats
37:31
or the Western civilization as it compares to Eastern
37:36
civilization or you know, whatever.
37:40
If you're comparing 2 things to simplify it, there are many
37:43
other things we do. You would do those using space
37:46
very creatively. And when I started and the final
37:50
one years, the one, the interpreters who were doing well
37:56
and moving forward and effectively we're displaying
38:00
confidence and we know all those things are important.
38:04
But what I realized was I had not been emphasizing those
38:08
things as deeply as I had been emphasizing, you know, did you
38:11
sign that just right? Did you say that just right?
38:15
And so out of that experience came this book, the Five Steps,
38:21
which they're not organized as steps.
38:23
Like the first thing, the second thing, the third, you can take
38:26
any step you want, but there are 5 categories of skill sets.
38:31
And so I decided, so I started teaching, this is in the 80s, I
38:37
started teaching workshops for interpreters who were already
38:40
interpreters. They were always capable.
38:43
And I started teaching these five things and that's what I
38:47
used to call it, the five things.
38:49
And the the participants invariably said they they knew
38:55
those things, but they now embedded those things into their
39:00
work in different ways and they were finding tremendous success.
39:05
Now, just to be clear, are we talking of a book for the
39:11
general interpreter population or more concentrated into the
39:16
ASL or other sign languages? When I first wrote it, it was
39:20
for sign language interpreters because that's what I know.
39:23
But after I was writing it for 40 years and with I had a
39:30
tremendous amount of exposure. Thank you to the spoken language
39:33
interpreter training world, to the educators in the spoken
39:37
language world, because I worked with educators from the Monterey
39:42
Institute of International Studies, which now is
39:44
Middlebury. I had worked with those people
39:47
and had taught with those people, and we had done some of
39:51
that People's Monetary Institute had a train, had some trainings
39:57
for interpreter educators who would come, and I was part of
40:01
that faculty. So I had all this exposure to
40:04
spoken language interpreter training.
40:07
Does that make sense? And I realized this all fits
40:11
everybody, not just sign language interpreters and even
40:14
the space chapter, you know, setting things up in space.
40:18
I realized there's so much around organizing ideas that is
40:23
spatial for spoken language interpreters and just the
40:26
perfect example is note taking. You know that there are
40:29
strategies that that we use as note takers to put information
40:35
in different segments and quadrants on our page.
40:38
There's just. That's the most obvious and
40:40
concrete example. But there are first one.
40:43
I thought you meant space. I thought about the way we
40:46
express ourselves, that we can createspace when we're telling a
40:51
story, for instance, by giving markers, talking about time and
40:55
things like that. Am I going off road here or is
40:59
it something else you talk about?
41:01
I have written this down because I believe you are absolutely
41:04
right, but I don't know that I emphasized it in the book, but
41:07
absolutely that is what I'm talking about as.
41:10
Well, you're going to have to rewrite the whole thing.
41:14
We need a sequel. It's full of little sticky notes
41:18
because I'm trying to, you know, I'm taking feedback.
41:22
It's for the next revision. So I have written down markers,
41:27
but I'll think about story. I'll think more, but thank you
41:30
and I'll be coming back to you about.
41:33
The episode. I was thinking about the, the
41:38
spatial concept as in like where where like for us for conference
41:42
interpreters, like where you would place the booth in terms
41:45
of in a room because like say, you know that 90% of the
41:49
speakers are going to be English speakers.
41:50
So you probably want to be on the side where there's going to
41:53
be the PowerPoint presentation in French and you don't want
41:56
people obstructing you. So maybe you want to be like up
41:59
higher. And that's what I was thinking
42:01
with space, but. Yeah.
42:04
I was more. Yeah, more like concrete then
42:08
abstract. Down too, language interpreters
42:12
have to get build skills in writing without looking as you
42:16
do too, I'm sure. But we I just wrote all that
42:18
down without looking. Turned this podcast into a focus
42:22
group. Space leaves room for
42:27
interpretation. That's.
42:29
True, I like it. Cool.
42:34
So, but you've written several books, so did you have to put
42:37
this one on hold in in order to write another book and then come
42:40
back to it, or is it a constant work in progress?
42:44
I'm I just no, I don't think any other book got in the way.
42:49
In fact, the previous book was written my my first book was
42:56
written before this book. It was.
42:59
It was actually the first a single authored book on sign
43:05
language interpreting in the field.
43:08
Wow. The previous one had been a
43:10
government document, you know, and so, yeah, it was a long time
43:15
ago. And then the revision, you know,
43:17
when it once it was revised, that that didn't take the kind
43:20
of time that would have stolen from this.
43:23
Just my lack of, you know, what was the fifth thing I talked
43:26
about? Confidence.
43:28
It was just my lack of confidence.
43:30
I think that didn't get me finished.
43:32
But I had some wonderful support.
43:35
In the past two years I've finished it in January of 2025,
43:40
so it's a 2025 publication. But in the time prior to that I
43:45
had some fabulous support from my publisher and from some of my
43:50
colleagues, academic colleagues and and boots on the ground
43:55
colleagues that helped me get it done.
43:57
Now if we want to buy this book or the latest one, can we find
44:03
it on Amazon? No, we're a very niche pup.
44:07
My publisher is very niche, but also our field, you know, is
44:11
pretty niche. And so she, our publisher is
44:16
interpreting consolidated. And if you but if you look up
44:20
powerful interpreting colon 5 step, build your skills in five
44:25
steps, powerful interpreting, build your skills in five steps,
44:29
you'll probably find it if you look me up Sharon Newman solo.
44:33
We'll make sure that in the description of this video, we
44:37
are we're gonna put a link so people can have access to this
44:42
book. Thank you if you do read this
44:44
book. If you do get this book, I am so
44:47
hungry for feedback, so please let me know what you think.
44:50
I honestly believe spoken language interpreters and sign
44:53
language interpreters need to talk to each other even more.
44:57
And so if there's anything that you would want me to put into
45:00
the next revision, let me know. Well, actually I have also one
45:08
question regarding career possibilities.
45:12
For instance, let's say I'm I like to speak with my hands.
45:18
Sometimes I even hit my microphone when the podcast.
45:21
So if I think I have potential to learn a new language and go
45:27
into a completely different field, would you encourage
45:32
interpreters in our field to perhaps explore some
45:36
possibilities in yours? And are there is there any work
45:40
available? Absolutely.
45:42
In in the United States, there's a very high need for trilingual
45:46
interpreters who are or quadrilingual ASL, English,
45:54
Mexican Sign Language. We have a very high need for
45:57
Mexican sign language. I'm in California all along the
46:02
South of the United States. You know, there's especially in
46:05
the southwest, Southwest. And so those, those interpreters
46:12
have a lot of work, people who are trilingual and quadrilingual
46:16
if they also speak Spanish, but they, that is less required than
46:21
having the Mexican sign language or the other sign language.
46:25
So any other sign language would be very, is very valuable.
46:30
But in the United States, the people who get the most work are
46:34
the ones who know Cuban sign language, Mexican sign language,
46:38
certain sign languages from South and Central America.
46:42
That's that's the larger populations that I'm aware of.
46:48
Mention is again, maybe Mexican sign language if you're in
46:51
California, Texas, that area, but Florida may be more Cuban
46:55
sign language. Puerto Rican and.
46:57
Puerto Rican sign language, OK. And it all along the East Coast
47:01
and then and then there are, you know, pockets of other signed
47:08
languages. So for example, I had, I taught
47:13
people in Chicago and there was, there were a couple of deaf, a
47:19
couple of interpreters there who were telling us that there's a
47:22
Russian enclave that they were working with and they knew
47:26
Russian sign language. And I, I don't know as much
47:32
about those, whether it's a single Russian sign language or
47:35
if there are many Russian sign languages depending on which
47:39
country or I, I don't know that. But I, But I do know that here
47:44
in California, it just so happens I work with one
47:46
interpreter who knows Ukrainian sign language.
47:50
Um, those things are just a big plus.
47:54
And if somebody is multilingual, there would be so much
47:59
opportunity in certain environments, for sure.
48:03
I have a colleague who is in New York City.
48:06
He knows he grew. He went to school in in Great
48:10
Britain, so he learned British Sign Language and he knows now
48:15
here's I'm going to blow your mind again.
48:17
We also have something called international sign language, an
48:21
international sign. I don't think it's a language,
48:24
but it's very much a sort of polished set of gestures that
48:30
are more or less universal. So people, but you have to learn
48:35
it to be, if people who go to big international conferences
48:40
learn this system of communication that is highly
48:44
iconic, but it's like Esperanto, except it's called Gestuno.
48:52
And it's, it's, as I say, it's not really a language, but
48:58
people have agreed and they've learned the symbols that are
49:02
shared. A common base.
49:04
There's a common base and it's a European common base.
49:07
So I don't know that this is international for Asian
49:12
countries for example, but this is.
49:14
Maybe Western International. I believe.
49:17
It's like when we hear the international community, it's
49:19
basically from the US to Australia, New Zealand, Canada
49:22
and the European Union. That's the international
49:24
community. Right, that's exactly true,
49:28
although in in this case it does include a lot of Africa for
49:32
sure. Oh yeah.
49:33
But that's included in what you did.
49:35
But no, this if I make a gesture that looks almost like I'm
49:42
making a sign of a broad piece of wood in the in the air, that
49:48
is the basic marker for a business in this international
49:52
just, you know, so you do that and then you do money and it
49:55
means bank. You do that and you do food, and
49:59
it means grocery. Store groceries.
50:02
Yeah, OK. What about for a language
50:05
agency? I wanna know.
50:07
Language Agency. This and then.
50:10
Yes. And then this which is gesturing
50:13
signing and then this is translation in gesture, not I
50:18
mean in just do not in American Sign Language.
50:20
So interpretation in gesture is a flat hand that turns over.
50:26
On the other hand, same hand, but it just turns over.
50:29
I just saw bread and butter. Well, it's the sign for cooking
50:33
in American Sign Language. There, Yeah, you even know
50:37
you're an ASL interpreter and that's why.
50:41
All in international, not in ASL.
50:46
That is wonderful. Wow.
50:49
Now I I did a conference a while back either, I forget if it was,
50:53
it was between 22,006 and 2008 and it was for Deaf Blind
50:57
international. They came to Canada and and had
51:00
a I think 3 day event. But there were not only sign
51:04
language interpreters, there were also interpreters that used
51:08
the palm of some of the participants hands to be able to
51:11
communicate the message and some people brought their own.
51:14
There was. I don't know if I've ever seen
51:16
so many interpreters in one place.
51:19
Exactly because that's a one-on-one interpreting
51:24
situation. Sometimes there are extremely
51:29
amazing humans who can have one hand finger spelling or signing
51:36
into the hand of the other person is how do some deaf
51:39
people, deaf blind people receive information, right?
51:44
And so there are, I've seen interpreters who have one hand
51:48
in the hand of one deaf blind person on the right and one hand
51:52
in the hand of another deaf person on their left.
51:55
And they're doing it simultaneously with both of
51:57
their hands. This is not ideal I would
52:00
imagine, but they can do that sometimes.
52:03
But what for the deaf blind community, there are quite a few
52:09
strategies. That's not the only one.
52:12
And one of them is, oh, I'm just so fascinated with this.
52:15
It's nothing I know deeply about.
52:17
I just know about it, but I don't know how to do it.
52:19
But it's called pro tactile, and the interpreter stands behind
52:25
the deaf blind person or sits behind them, and there are
52:29
regions on their back. It's like a map, and they tap in
52:34
certain ways on their back to show that the audience is
52:38
laughing or people look confused or, you know, to give them
52:43
feedback on what's going on in their environment.
52:46
Oh, wow. Yeah.
52:48
So there's a lot going on. Thank goodness for the to sort
52:52
of support deaf blind people being incorporated into
52:56
environments and not missing things.
52:58
There were a lot of applauses like this too.
53:02
Shaking our hands in the air. Is that the Universal Sign
53:06
Language or other sign languages use a different gesture for
53:10
applause? I suspect that's pretty.
53:13
I don't know in, in the United States, that's the gesture for
53:16
applause. And I, I, I'm pretty sure in
53:19
Canada as well, I'm pretty sure it's European, if not Western,
53:24
all of Western culture and. Then what about interferences,
53:28
for instance, now that with the Internet, with social media and
53:33
Zoom and all of that, are there any gestures that oh, that's
53:38
that's ones easier and Americans or and British and then they
53:42
would start to go and from 1 into the other.
53:45
There has been a great deal of borrowing absolutely as the
53:50
world gets smaller, you know, as deaf people and communities
53:54
interact from culture to culture, there have been things
53:59
that you just you pick up and you it becomes part of your
54:03
vocabulary of this culture as well as.
54:07
So it's borrowing yes, tremendous amount of that
54:11
happening. I believe in the world,
54:14
especially among communities where there's a lot of
54:18
interaction with other countries, other cultures.
54:22
Well well, this has been an amazing OHK.
54:28
More if you don't mind I. We'll, we'll cut the Spartan.
54:32
You go. Give you without asking you a
54:34
question regarding the changes in technology.
54:37
Ohhhhh just zoom in. The last 6-7 years completely
54:43
change our lives in conference interpretation simultaneous
54:46
because of online meetings and also a greater awareness in
54:51
access for different communities out there.
54:57
Have you had the same experience in your field?
55:00
Absolutely. And I'll tell you, you know who
55:04
suffered the most in COVID was deaf, blind people because they
55:10
couldn't. You can't feel my hand through a
55:12
screen. So they most isolated, but we,
55:16
Oh my gosh, we just had to pivot when that happened.
55:20
We had to pivot and learn how to use this technology,
55:24
two-dimensional, you know, sound.
55:26
We know that sound, when it's not in the air between us, is
55:32
also the bandwidth matters and sound can change and it's not
55:37
quite as easy to understand each other through the telephone or
55:41
video or whatever as it is in person.
55:44
But that is actually more difficult visually because of
55:47
the two dimensionality of the screen versus the three
55:50
dimensionality of signing, right.
55:53
So it is a challenge, not huge, not a huge challenge most of the
55:57
time. But yeah, we've, we've really
56:00
found this to be a a huge gift professionally to be able to
56:06
work. I'm working with you and you're
56:08
in Canada right now. Yeah.
56:10
You're in California. And I'm in California, yeah.
56:14
And that's so cool. And I'm, I interpret for I,
56:19
I've, I've been interpreting for things that are UN related in
56:23
New York and here I am in California.
56:25
I don't have to get on a plane. Not that I don't like getting on
56:28
a plane, but it's just it's very convenient when I'm interpreting
56:32
for two hours. So you'll do it at home unless
56:35
it's in Italy. Unless it's.
56:40
That's awesome. Yeah.
56:41
Because we we have a lot of AI like filtering into our our
56:46
world too. So do you?
56:48
Is there such a thing as like an AI generated person that does
56:52
ASL? Yeah, There's none that I'm
56:56
aware of that are doing interpreting.
56:59
OK. Are you know images?
57:06
I don't know somebody showing a sign that's an AI generated body
57:11
signing something for a dictionary type.
57:14
Not a dictionary, but like a dictionary reference, little
57:18
things. People are moving to close
57:21
captioning too, but that's not even.
57:24
Close captioning taking your your your some work away from
57:27
you. I don't think so.
57:29
I think most people that I would work with are grateful for
57:34
captioning because it can help support their listening and.
57:40
It's a great tool. But it's a tool.
57:43
But they won't. They wouldn't rely on it all the
57:47
way. And let me tell you one real
57:48
quick reason. How are they gonna respond?
57:52
Let's say they are being asked a question, then the captioning
57:56
will not capture their answer. So they would have to have us to
58:00
interpret into English or they'd have to type it out.
58:03
But that's that's. Slower.
58:05
Slower and many, many people are not fluent enough in English to
58:12
look as smart as they really are.
58:14
If they were to have to type it out in English, like they might
58:18
be very articulate and very clever, but they don't know
58:22
English well enough to show that.
58:24
But they're signing would show that we would see the brilliance
58:27
of the person in their language choices.
58:29
Just as you might have a colleague, or I mean, I don't
58:33
mean a colleague, but you might have a client who speaks
58:36
English, you know well enough not fluent in English and
58:43
they're fluent in French. And then for them to try to say
58:47
the same thing in English, they would come across as but if they
58:52
said it in French, they'd be brilliant.
58:55
That kind of thing that we have to think about.
58:58
I think people don't always think about that too.
59:02
The the, the going back into the other language.
59:06
Yeah, like, especially, yeah, how are you gonna do close
59:09
captioning or understand someone when they have a question and
59:11
they have to ask it with their hands?
59:14
We get that a lot too. It's like, oh, you're only
59:16
interpreting for one person. It's like, no, no, no.
59:17
Because if that one person has a question or wants to be part of
59:23
the conversation, anybody who doesn't speak that language
59:27
needs to wear a headset. Exactly.
59:30
But I'm often having to try trying to gently remind people
59:34
we're not interpreters for deaf people, we're interpreters
59:38
between 2 languages. But see how our organization has
59:42
that title Registered Interpreters for the job?
59:46
Because that's the misconception that we're interpreting for one
59:50
person, one population. But but everybody needs to know
59:54
what they want to say as well as them wanting to know what the
59:58
spoken language is. So absolutely, yeah, glad we're
1:00:01
on the same page about. That we are, absolutely.
1:00:05
I'm all ears. OK.
1:00:10
All right, We're getting closer to the top of the hour, so we
1:00:16
will actually, we'll ask you to come again.
1:00:19
Yeah. Whenever you have something to
1:00:21
share, or perhaps you wrote another book or another version
1:00:24
of this current book, all the descriptions and you have any
1:00:28
sites to share and all of that, it'll be in the description
1:00:31
below. And Brian, last word.
1:00:34
Yeah, well, I promised a breath of fresh air and we got a breath
1:00:37
of fresh air. So thank you, Sharon.
1:00:40
It's been really awesome having you for the the last hour.
1:00:43
And yeah, I wish we could continue this conversation.
1:00:46
I know that our listeners have an attention span 45 minutes,
1:00:50
which is what we promised. But we we're going, we apologize
1:00:53
for going a little over, but yeah, it's been awesome.
1:00:58
And we do encourage you to come back soon and tell us what's new
1:01:04
in the world of ASL because you're definitely someone who
1:01:07
has had this passion that looks like your entire life.
1:01:10
So yeah, thank you so much for the for accepting our invitation
1:01:14
and for coming on. Thank you so much for having me.
1:01:17
I have had. I haven't had this much fun in a
1:01:19
long time. This was just wonderful.
1:01:21
Thank you. Well, the pleasure was ours as
1:01:25
well. We'll do it from Italy next
1:01:27
time.