Workshops

Ava Hawkins: “Interpreters without Borders – How do I participate?”

Workshop Summary: This presentation will focus on interpreting abroad. She will share her experiences working as an ASL as well as an International Sign interpreter in various countries and continents. She will share some of the cross cultural experiences, intercultural experiences, and various stories that provide insight on what pre requisites are helpful to work effectively at the international level. She will also provide resources and information on how to begin attaining work abroad whether that is as national or international interpreter.

She will also discuss the possibilities of pro bono work which also assists organizations such as WASL I and Deaflympics, which are then able to use the funds they save to extend their humanitarian/support works to other countries. This workshop welcomes both Deaf and Hearing interpreters.


Marty Taylor: “Video Relay Industry Research: What do Deaf & Hard of Hearing Callers, Interpreters and Managers Report?”

Workshop Summary: Video relay interpreting is a fast growing industry requiring highly skilled and experienced interpreters to provide hearing and deaf callers with access to one another.

Elegance, accuracy, and efficiency are never accidents but are instead a magic combination of experience, attention to detail and skill that only highly competent and qualified interpreters can accomplish.

This presentation will report on the results of a six-month research project conducted in 2007. The research included data collection at five video relay call centers across the United States, interviewing 143 deaf and hard of hearing callers, interpreters, and managers. The results of the interviews will be highlighted from the perspective of these participants.

It is well documented that teachers make over 200 decisions every hour. This can be said of video relay interpreters as well. The experience that is required along with the specific skill sets, knowledge and personal attributes will be discussed. Attracting interpreters to work in this industry, training them, along with possible incentives and longevity will be addressed, including issues of burn out and injury. The impact on and recommendations for Deaf and hard of hearing callers, interpreters, and education programs will be provided.


Kelly Murphy: “Warning: Explicit Content! Managing Profanity in English Discourse”

Workshop Summary: It is amazing how much damage four little letters can do. Profanity as a function of language has often been overlooked and not considered “real” language, (Jay, 2000) however interpreters do not have the luxury of dismissing this emotional component. Due to its potential for miscommunication and emotional harm, professionals should have educated and informed strategies for managing these utterances and be able to articulate the decision rationale. Professionals will benefit from education about profanity, its linguistic function, history and current use in English. From our collective experiences, we can re-examine situations we have faced in the past and use those to plan for the future. Interpreters will significantly benefit from further education, collaborative discussion, and practice in a safe environment - to ready themselves the next time they face those four little letters.


Beverly Dooley: “Deaf events; can you join – or not?”

Workshop Summary: From my experience in working and associating with interpreters – these questions often come up.

  • How does an interpreter participate in the community and where/how do they draw the line between their role as an interpreter and recreation?
  • Who decides whether or not you should participate in the community – you or other interpreters who influence you?
  • Who should you ask if you have doubts about participating in an event?
  • Why do you have a doubt?
  • You want to educate Deaf people about the difference between your role as an interpreter and as a person to socialize with – but how?
  • How do Deaf Interpreters, who are also part of Deaf community – deal with these same issues?

In this workshop, I, as a deaf consumer, will present from my findings based on my experience of over 18 years; through friends; interpreters and the internet. This workshop will include a presentation, an open discussion, breakouts with questions for groups to develop ideas & solutions for presentation.

This workshop is not intended to solve all situations because each interpreter has different inner skills; attitudes and knowledge. However this workshop can assist you to analyze your profession/personal interest in working with and/or socializing in the Deaf community.


Campbell McDermid: “Two Cultures, One Program”

Workshop Summary: In the winter and spring of 2004, faculty members of five American Sign Language (ASL) - English Interpreter Programs (AEIP) and four Deaf Studies Programs (DSP) in Canada were interviewed and asked to discuss their experiences as educators. Several areas were identified as common themes and one in particular was the intersection of culture and teaching. Differences were noted, for example, in experiences and discursive practices based on cultural identity as Deaf or non-Deaf individuals. Deaf staff members were typically assigned the language and culture courses. There was evidence the Deaf staff followed a collectivist orientation. Examples of oppression based on cultural differences, audism were found at the level of the administration, amongst peers, and with students.


Carmela Castellano and Kyra Zimmer: “Best Practices in Educational Interpreting: Trained VS Untrained Interpreters, Making an Informed Choice.”

In the past, Deaf children attended schools for the Deaf where they would acquire language. Today however, children are more frequently integrated into their home schools with an interpreter. Interpreting skills range dramatically from those who are very fluent to those who have very little knowledge of ASL. It can be very difficult for most parents, school teams, and administrators who are unfamiliar with ASL to truly understand the significance of this range in skill. The goal of this workshop is to showcase a DVD that is designed to demonstrate this difference as well as help clarify best practices of interpreting in the classroom for the sake of the inclusion of signing Deaf children.


Parental comments and professional perspectives are also included in the DVD which gives rise to the programming needs and educational consequences of students who struggle to access curriculum. In order to embody these perspectives more fully, significant workshop time will be spent discussing how participants can use this DVD as an informative tool that will leave them better equipped to educate others about the difference in the quality of interpretation between an untrained "signer" and a trained interpreter.



Debra Russell: “Getting to Skopos – what does mediated teacher talk look like?”

Workshop Summary: This presentation describes preliminary data from a Canadian study of interpreting in educational settings where the interpreting quality was examined by looking at several key language functions that may typically emerge in an educational setting. The interpretation provided in several classrooms was examined for its ability to realize the purpose or skopos behind the messages of the teacher. What strategies do interpreters use to represent these functions:
  • Meta-cognitive questions
  • Scaffolding
  • Reconceptualizing
  • Reciprocal teaching
  • Feedback from Teachers

These findings reveal that when interpreters play a critical role in the con-construction of meaning in a classroom, and that their strategies can either serve to engage teachers and learners or to distance learners from teachers. This discourse analysis data challenge us to address gaps in our education and on-going professional development, and to improve our interpretation through discourse based approaches in our work.


Jack Hoza: “Politeness Cross-linguistically: Comparing ASL and English”

Workshop Summary: The jacket of the presenter's new book states, "The general stereotype regarding interaction between American Sign Language and English is a model of oversimplification: ASL signers are direct and English speakers are indirect. [The author's] study… upends this common impression through an in-depth comparison of the communication styles between these two language communities."

This presentation will explore this level of language by looking at how requests (asking someone to do something) and rejections (turning someone down) are expressed by ASL signers and English speakers in face-to-face interaction. Using linguistic politeness theory, contexts that vary by 'power relations' (equal, greater, or lesser power) and 'degree of imposition' (easy to request/reject vs. difficult to request/reject) will be considered in the analysis of specific contexts.

The presentation will introduce politeness theory and demonstrate how politeness theory provides a structured way of doing cross-linguistic comparisons, and will present a variety of examples of requests and rejections in ASL and English to highlight how situational factors affect the linguistic strategies used in these contexts. The presentation will then conclude by highlighting the research findings on the mitigation of requests and rejections by these two language groups. Participants will find that while there are politeness strategies that are unique to each language group, there are also some similarities that both language groups share.


Joanna Bennett: “Drama for the Interpreter”

Workshop Summary: Do you:

  • feel shy when interpreting in front of a crowd?
  • get embarrassed reproducing a message that contradicts your personal style?
  • want to try something fun?

Then the Drama for the Interpreter workshop is for YOU!

This workshop invites interpreters of all ages and experience to experiment with body and facial movement through drama exercises.

Participants will listen to various auditory messages and explore how to reproduce them physically in different ways, communicating without voice or sign.

Have no fear! Through supportive group and partner work, gain confidence acting out fun characters and scenarios in a pressure-free zone.

(Maximum 16 participants; pairing up for this workshop is of great importance, if you sign up, please respect the limited number and be sure to attend. Participants should wear comfortable clothing for ease of movement. Bringing bottled water is a good idea as well.)


Nigel Howard: “Deafhood”

Workshop Summary: A brief journey through Deafhood and its concepts will be examined. The role and relationship of interpreters within the realm of Deafhood will be explored, along with some historical perspectives. The aim is to have you leave the workshop with a fresh and new perspective of Deaf culture and Deafhood.


Paul Ledrew: “Conceptually Inaccurate Signs”

Workshop Summary: My presentation called Conceptually Inaccurate Signs, CIS for short, refers to the numerous signs in American Sign Language which have been created over the years by inappropriately basing them on at least four things: influences dictated by the voice and sounds used in the hearing world, the perceived need to initialize signs with handshapes (such as “R” and “C”) drawn from the manual alphabet, the tendency to create compound signs which combine two distinct signs into one sign that lacks conceptual clarity, and the insistence on trying to formulate signs that match the needs of written English grammar. You can see the first in signs commonly glossed as “TELL” and “ANNOUNCE”. Signs glossed as “REASON” and “COMMUNICATE” are examples of the second. Invented signs such as “DEADLINE” and “NO IDEA” show how individually meaningful signs are compressed into meaningless signs. “WITHOUT” and “INSTEAD-OF” demonstrate the final influence. Ongoing research is uncovering other sources of Conceptually Inaccurate Signs.

These inappropriate sign creations have become entrenched in ASL through frequent usage. You can see Deaf people using these signs every day without realizing that they are using signs that are conceptually inaccurate. When you think carefully about these signs you can see that they are unsuitable, but they have been passed down through the years without having been subjected to critical analysis. Sadly, Deaf people have not challenged the inappropriateness of these signs.


Steven Fischer: “AVLIC New Handbook on Occupational Health and Safety for Sign Language Interpreters”

Workshop Summary: Sign language interpreting is both a physically and mentally demanding task. AVLIC in collaboration with WSIB, Ryerson University and the University of Waterloo in consultation with AVLIC have been addressing these demands as the need to revise the current AVLIC Occupational Health and Safety Handbook Repetitive Strain Injuries Position Paper became evident. The goal of the revising the AVLIC document is to provide interpreters documentation on factors that might affect their occupational health and safety in various interpreting settings. The following themes of or new handbook “Occupational Health and Safety for Sign Language Interpreters” will provide the backbone for the presentation: The Job of Sign Language Interpreting, Occupational Health Concerns, Sign Production and Style, Situational Factors, Wear and Damage, and Prevention.


Terry Janzen: “Rethinking Equivalence: Does the Target Message Ever Represent the Source Message?”

Workshop Summary: A fundamental premise in interpretation is that the interpreter seeks to take the message in the source text and reconstruct it in the target text, and that the result is “message equivalency”. Equivalence is something interpreters constantly attempt to attain—it is a constant goal, consumers expect it, and interpreters’ examining boards and certification mechanisms test for it. And yet for many reasons, what equivalence actually is, and how it is reached, is not so easy to pin down. To begin with, there are both many definitions of equivalence and many disparate models of interpreting under which the interpreter may work that approach the transfer between source and target text differently. Nida (1964) for one, discusses difference between “formal equivalence” (form-based transfer) and “dynamic equivalence” (experientially-based transfer). Each has its merits depending on circumstances within the event, but each approach raises issues that are difficult to resolve. Regarding models, Seleskovich’s (1978) three-stage model treats formal properties of texts as less significant, but doesn’t explain how the interpreter knows she is finding equivalent meaning. Wilcox and Shaffer (2005) claim that conduit models cannot be truly dispensed with until interpreters understand that communication itself is not a conduit for meaning, that meaning is never “there for the taking” but must be constructed by the listener or watcher, and Janzen and Shaffer (in press) describe in detail why meaning is not just “constructed” but constantly co-constructed between speaker/signer and addressee. Perhaps what is taking place is that the more interpreters understand about the complexities of our work, the less comfortable we are believing that we are in a neutral position of message “transfer”.

And so there are many questions that present themselves. For example, given that understanding the sense of a message is something that occurs within the interpreter’s mind, and choosing target text constructions is something the interpreter does (and is not something the source speaker does), and also that the interpreter needs constantly to strategize to put together a cohesive text (not to mention compensating for cultural, experiential, and linguistic differences), how can we say that our target texts closely resemble source texts? Is there a rubric we can all agree upon to measure equivalence, or do we need to account for situational differences? And getting back to fundamentals, how can the interpreter be assured that she is delivering no more and no less than the same message that is intended at the source?

This panel discussion brings together an international group of experts in the field of signed language interpretation who are practitioners, interpretation instructors, researchers and theorists, and who each bring important perspectives on the question of equivalence. They are: Debra Russell (University of Alberta), Lorraine Leeson (Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland), Karen Malcolm (Douglas College, Vancouver), Hubert Demers (Red River College, Winnipeg), and Barbara Shaffer (University of New Mexico). The format of the session will be short presentations, discussion by panel members, and discussion with the audience. The panel will be moderated by Terry Janzen (University of Manitoba).

Special thanks to Dwayne Lewis for designing the official AVLIC 2008 logo.
Click here to visit his website.
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