Ruth detected that I "sound better" even via pager this morning. :-) You know - I got that paper done and submitted, just got plane tickets to DC for both upcoming trips - NAMI/Breakout and Conference of Interpreter Trainers.
My roomies have arrived, are settling in, and all is "go" for us to hang tonight and start sorting out details. My room's still a bit of a disaster, but it is taking shape. I need to get the small dresser and bedside table from VT, then I should be set.
Well. I actually finished the paper to submit to the proceedings for Critical Link 4, held in Stockholm last spring, a whole day EARLY! Gee! Somehow, the universe smiled on me with the blessing of time. Time-wise, I'd spent 3-4 half days on it earlier this summer, and three 5-6 hour days on it as the deadline neared. Scheduling the time to write, amidst and among everything else, has to be the single toughest thing for an aspiring academic/researcher to figure out.
The grand thing is, though, that the work I'd done earlier percolated long enough that I actually generated a few brand new connections (!), and these are what will now drive my proposal to present at RID's conference next summer. Deadline upcoming.
The Alaska folk posted some pics and workshop descriptions from the conference last spring.
Meanwhile, I worked with someone recently who busted my chops for voicing and "walking all over" a hearing person who was already speaking. Actually, my team was very kind and indirect with the feedback (I could do better in this regard!), but I caught myself at least three times, twice with the same interlocutors (a definite "dynamic") and know that it happens other times too. I need to do a better job taking in the visual message and finding the proper auditory moment to convey it.
We had a vigorous debate throughout the assignment on a variety of issues - quite exhilerating, actually. :-) One of the things I'm trying to explore the limits of is how much accommodating and adjusting the interpreter must, should, ought (?) to do to make the communication appear seamless, when the "reality" is that there's a hearing norm/timeframe and a deaf norm/timeframe that are not in sync. I've a feeling that the more we (interpreters) adjust for this, the less likely the group-as-a-whole is to develop actual bicultural norms and connected relationships across the language divide. But how to leave the juxtapositions unmasked without feeding misperceptions and stereotypes is the precise point I think my team was trying to make.
Interesting stuff at The International Network for Life Studies. The author (?), Morioka Masahiro, is interested in consciousness, communication, disability, death (and dying process?), philosophy, desire, bioethics, feminism, religion...hmmm!
I like that he thinks beyond the surface of things, as evidenced in this debate about succession within the Japanese Imperial Family. This is what I'm trying to do in the Critical Link article on professionalization.
The Interpreter, directed by Sydney Pollack, will be filmed on location at the United Nations (article from NYTimes posted in the extended entry). Might be a fine opportunity for some media analysis of representations of interpreters. Useful for training purposes, I bet.
And I never watched the West Wing, but James and Vangie recently started plowing through all the episodes, and have been amused by the interpreter's antics conveying romantic exchanges between Marlee Matlin's character and a non-deaf co-worker who wants to be beau. (If I understood James' summary of the situation correctly.)
