Where I want to be next Halloween, the first conference for the World Association of Sign Language Interpreters!
Interpreting: October 2004 Archives
Benjamin sucked me right into that trick question at his presentation today! Of course I *assumed* that if he was showing us a certain example it had to mean something. :-)
A couple of the new cohorters got right in there - but what was up with all y'all marching in late and disrupting the whole show, eh?! And did anyone besides me notice the faculty member dozing off and on throughout?
Some of the reasons I love my job:
Vermont State Poet Grace Paley kissed me on the check tonight after I interpreted her poem (and was introduced as Stephanie Van Kent, has a nice ring to it, don'tcha think?!) :-) She did two of the most common things that non-deaf people do when they meet Deaf folk - show off the sign language they know and comment on learning the language. But I must say that she added quite a unique twist to both of these - such that she bridged the crosscultural distance and made interpersonal contact with the Deaf members of her audience in a heartbeat.
What I will say, is that her "sign language" wasn't exactly ASL, and her reason for thinking she ought to learn it wasn't uttered in the Queen's English. She's a hoot!
This piece by Burton J. Bledstein, The Culture of Professionalism, is amazing. My mind was spinning with thoughts about Critical Link 4 and Mette Rudvin's presentation and paper (that I referenced in my submission to the Proceedings). (Many links cite him; here's one of interest.)
He says professionalization is the penultimate triumph of the "Mid-Victorians" exerting control over personal and social life, by circumscribing specific areas of knowledge which bestowed the knowers with a kind of magical power in a vertically-oriented society, always looking up for self-advancement. "The autonomy of a professional person derived from a claim upon powers existing beyond the reach or understanding of ordinary humans" (p. 93-94).
I needed to escape the CIT conference for awhile and recharge my soul. I went to the new American Indian Museum, which includes/covers all the Nations of South, Central, and North America. On my way there, I was sitting outside waiting for the subway, and a freight train rumbled by on the other side of the tracks. I guess because I was anticipating where I was going, I was attentive to the sensation of the train. Before I heard it's arrival, I had been listening to the birds and the breeze rustling the leaves in the trees. Then a disturbance in the air, which grew louder and Louder and LOUDER until the earth started to vibrate. The train wasn't even in view yet! It came around a curve and the roar was, while not deafening, louder than anything natural except perhaps an avalanche or a tornado. It lingered too...fading slowly, as if its passing had left an indelible mark in the atmosphere. I could imagine, for a moment, what it must have been like for those first trains to careen across the continent, rending the rhythm of the world.
"Teaching people how to create is the antidote to oppression."
After I eavesdropped on a long conversation about knitting (!) I gave my card to these folk because I knew I was going to blog about them. :-)
Carolyn Ball ends her tenure as CIT President, replaced by Annette Miner at the business meeting this afternoon. I don't know either one of them so I can't say much, except that when Carolyn flexed her muscles during the Opening on Wednesday night...well, I stayed out of her way. ;-)
Marian Yoder won the Mary Stotler Award, and the audience was disappointed she wasn't here to receive the honor in person. :-(
Was quite an entertaining group at the Closing Banquet tonight. Let me just say, on my way down in the elevator, I met Carol Patrie (dressed to the nine's), without her nametag because "that would spoil the look." So said Sharon Neumann-Solow, who apparently wasn't the one who told me my workshop at RID last year had got everyone's "knickers in a twist" - but she was ready to take credit for it! (I'll remember who it was, one of these days.)
Table 17 had some symmetry going on from the get-go.
Folks, this is such an awesome technology! Kellie, you deserve a medal for getting this all set up. I hope people get jazzed about it, because its potential to promote professional development and enhance the field is incredible. :-)
Of course, I had to go to the practice session to figure out how the heck to Get In! The main trick is to Login (Member's Login, 2nd link left-hand side), which takes you through the membership database. Select "Bulletin Board" and then register (yes, again). After one registers for the Bulletin Board, then you can login (yes, again!)
I attended part of Robyn's workshop on observation supervision, and can see immediately why so many people have told me to check out her work. There are definitely many overlaps. :-)
Demands are, simply, those tasks required of the job itself. Controls are the decisions one takes/makes to manage the delivery of these tasks.
Controls sound a lot like regulation in the Vygotskian sense (see previous post). Robyn described them as "decisions, actions, and attitudes - even recognizing a demand is a control" (not necessarily an exact quote, smile). There seems to be an implication that these controls are conscious? Since I don't know the whole theory, I may be speculating way "out of turn" (surprise!), but it seems like putting the two approaches into dialogue with each other might be really productive. For instance, does demand-control theory itself recognize that some controls are unconscious (meaning habitual or reactive)?
Between the process mediation workshop and Betty's poster session on self-regulation, I finally have a conceptual understanding of inhibiting) one's own desires.
When Patty N. said this to me yesterday, I knew it was a joke (no one has ever known me for my fashion-sense)! It suppose it might have been a reflection of her official role interpreting for the conference: if she was dressed down, like me, then she would have been a participant. (Anyone have other possible interpretations?) ;-)
Patty G. has been a great roommate. She comes in each evening and regales me with the humorous anecdote of the day. First it was Lynn's debacle with the subway on the way to Mongolian barbeque (which I understand was yummy), and then it was a friend's kid, a firstgrader who reads at the graduate level. Can you imagine having a kid that reads better than you? I had to wonder what that means.....in my 3rd year of grad school I'm realizing that even though I *thought* I understood what I've been reading for the past two years, there were more layers and dimensions to it of which I had no awareness at all! How can someone with so little life experience comprehend reading at that level? Personally, I think it makes the case for reincarnation.
I have collected more data on my hypothesis that the silence factor is only a symptom of a deeper, phenomenological difference between Deaf and non-deaf (a.k.a. "hearing") people. I say phenomenological because I think it goes deeper even than culture, it is a constitutive mode of perception that shapes cognition.
During the process mediation workshop yesterday, Bob talked about his processing time, using phrases like, "Hurry up, it's been 10 seconds", and that he felt "frantic". These statements refer not to the silence itself, but to the sensation, knowledge, or awareness of time passing. Later, during my poster session, I asked Eileen if Deaf people feel time passing like that, and she laughed, "No! We don't feel that way!" My read of her reaction was that it was almost inconceivable.
I am worn out from the stimulation. ;-) Got some clarity tonight in Betty's session on Vygotsky. Lots to mull over and refine in my interpersonal class. Also, the notion of scaffolding groups....that's more where I see myself in relation to what(ever) my "contribution" might be to the profession. That's the work on group dynamics and group discourses that I presented today at my poster session. So many things happening here! I got to attend 1/2 of Laurie and Wendy's session on peer mentoring, and half of Betty and Company's session on process mediation. I love interpreters! We are so committed to self-knowledge and the development of interpersonal communication skills. ;-)
"Interpreters demonstrate respect for all consumers and their diversity."
I understand that the term ìrespectî is intended to convey obligation to ìall consumersî, but I was hoping that the committee working on this revision would address clearly the notions of impartiality, fairness, and/or reciprocity as an ethical stance on behalf of the organization as a whole. I suggest that it really matters that we use one of these terms ñ problematic as they are! ñ in order to move the practice of interpreting away from being a testing ground for deaf empowerment and toward a more consistently enacted relational event among the interlocutors. Without a clear institutional stance from RID/NAD, the issues of power, oppression and empowerment are ìlocked inî to the microsocial dynamic between deaf interlocutors and non-deaf interpreters.
In my mind, this is the single most pressing issue that this revision can, should, and needs to address; instead, the current draft exacerbates the problem with principle 4.2:
