Interpreting: August 2009 Archives

The quote above is from a comment by blenCOWe to a blogpost, Theory of International Politics and Zombies, by Daniel W. Drezner. Drezner's blog entry is an example along the lines of this youtube video, Gay Science Isolates the Christian Gene, and a powerpoint presentation made by MJ Bienvenu at the recent biennial convention of the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf, in which she offered deconstructions of audism from the organization's official website. For example:


The pedagogy of this style of teaching is aptly captured by Erin in her comment to Drezner:

"As Daniel Nexon and Iver Neumann write, "The mirror approach is broader than simply deploying popular culture artifacts as a teaching aid. IR scholars can examine popular culture as a medium for exploring theoretical concepts, dilemmas of foreign policy, and the like." (12)."

The mirror approach operates on the simple principle of substitution: take an existing discourse, and

a) reverse the key tropes (as in "Gay Science" or unveiling audism in "The Heart of the RID Organization"),
b) replace the key actors with an abstraction, or
c) combine both.

A View from Communication Theory

The engagement spawned (ha) is impressive. A communication theorist has many choices for analysis: as a media text, from the viewpoint of audience, in terms of effects, as a language game (Wittgenstein), as a social use of information and communications technology, not to mention the rich data seeded throughout regarding regional, national, and gendered points of view (classist, ableist, etc), and the production of online identities. It can be critiqued from a variety of viewpoints, including (for instance) political economy, pragmatism, or cultural studies, and at differing levels, such as mass media or interpersonal communication.

My own take is to regard the entry and comments as an instance of discourse: academic, specific to one discipline, and (probably, as goes the zeitgeist) rooted more in space than time. The use of wit (humor) to display breadth, depth, and precision of one's knowledge in fast repartee is the most valorized contemporary mode of intellectual engagement. Everyone who can find a way in, does, and those who can't find their way quickly enough, don't. By the time the entry point clarifies into a path (or the perceptible path finds its entry point), the exchange is over, the event is closed. The instigators and participants have moved on to the next sexy thing. The normative behavior is that the immediate "space" occupied by this interaction has been effectively controlled: everyone (who matters?) has had their say in shining flashes of inspiration.

What strikes me, as an action researcher and a constructivist, is multileveled. First, unadulterated admiration. I envy the lightening comprehension and instant formulation of coherent, contextualized, educative information. Second, awe. We know so much. Ok, so I'm liberally folding myself into the "we," but seriously: look at the range of knowledge pouring out! It isn't as if there aren't tons of "us" out here who understand the historical momentum of the social forces we're working with - or against, as the case may be. blenCOWe continues:

In terms of his liberal institutionalist and constructivist analyses, Drezner is counting on the fact that the zombies would have the cognitive ability to calculate the benefits and drawbacks to collaborating with other actors. As such, any ideas of building an international organization, including the presence of zombies, to deal with the presence of zombies or to build a world state inclusive of zombies appears to be quite impossible.

Lastly, when he addresses neoconservatism he recognizes that the zombie threat was an existential threat, noting that the threat from zombies is from their jealously over our freedom and not from their desire for our brains. Like the faults with the other theories, this analysis is based on the faulty assumption that zombies have the ability to make cognitive decisions like that. The unavoidable fact is simple, zombies pose a threat to humans because of their desire for brains and for no other reason.

Zombies pose a threat not only because of their desire for eating brains, but - crucially - because that primal desire is coupled with an accompanying lack of brains. The implicit message in the IR discourse about Zombies is that there are, already, zombies among us. I suggest there are three broad types:

• the undead who have accepted a singular social and ideological "programming" as the one and only way to make sense of their lives,


• the undead who have embraced a particular intellectual framework in order to cope with existential anxiety and/or the evolutionary pressures of anarchy, and


• the undead who have selected to master the terms of the zeigeist, "Let's get cynical!"

Now what?

With the "what" of varying ideological understandings so thoroughly grasped in the space of two days' interaction, enter the dimension of time. I'm speaking of deep time (esp. deep history), small time (i.e., Bakhtin), and time inclusive of the future. Politically, time is apprehendible in norms of culture and forms of institutions. Simply, what changes and what stays the same? As the Human versus Zombie IR debate unfolds, applications are posed or elaborated, such as two-level game theory and accepting Zombies as a new class to be integrated into the existing global structure. Erin, quoted above, offered

"a brief survey (n=3) I conducted in the last 5 minutes unanimously suggest[ing] that zombies should probably be considered alongside Kosovo to understand IR theory."

She also adds "an important caveat," to her random sampling:

"...2/3 of respondents volunteered that they conditioned their response on zombie attacks, unlike extraterrestrial visitations, remaining confined to the realm of hypothetical thought experiments."

While I agree with the pedagogical impulse, the effect of continuing to deploy only such discrete strategies extends temporally into the future, replicating the same momentum of monological thought that substantively prevents us from finding collective means for creatively managing the diversity of human ways of being. In other words, will the brilliance of insight and potential demonstrated by Drezner & Company be translated into wisdom with a voice?

Engaging intellectual battle in the abstract can be deeply satisfying and even entertaining, the case of Zombies in point. But what about those of us who don't speak that language? Why must we continue to demarcate the differences in such ways as to reinforce the space of separation between them? This is an illness of extreme disciplinarity. There will always be gaps. Can we ply them creatively? To do so, I suggest we need to consider multilingual models, in particular the potential of interpreted interactions. In The Language Barrier as an Aid to Communication, Rodrigo Ribeiro argues the importance of not understanding in a case study involving the steel industry, technology transfer, and Japanese and Brazilian forms of life

the 'language barrier', which is normally thought as a problem, can aid communication by preventing people who hold potentially clashing concepts, beliefs and customs from directly confronting each other.

While I support Ribeiro's conclusion of value based on non-confrontation and interpreters' strategies of mediation, I suggest this is only one manifestation of the intercultural communication practice of multilingual/interpreted interaction. The Japanese and Brazilian interlocutors are learning - through this process - how to be with difference. What we academics need to help politicians create are systems that can deal fluidly with difference - ideological, linguistic, cultural, etc - that are, in essence, multilogical rather than monological. Among the strategies that could work are finding ways among ourselves to communicate with each other across, among, and between our fields of expertise.

Building on the potential for a paradigm shift is matter of recognition, marketing, and design. These processes can proactively influence each other, interacting and changing through the development of a project. All are contained within the conception and application of strategic planning.

Strategy has to involve conceptualizing the outcome in two different yet complementary ways. First, you must imagine what you want in terms of place. In the case of the next national conference of the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf (RID, US-based), the physical location will be some hotel in Atlanta, GA, but the more important issue is how the space of the place will be designed and implemented in order to generate the desired kinds of intercultural interaction. The second dimension that must be considered is time. By time, I do not mean the logistics of scheduling or considerations about the length of the event or even its parts. These are obviously important logistical factors that require detailed attention. However, the most important temporal factor to consider is how the conference contributes to long-term patterning of habits and attitudes for engaging in intercultural social interaction.

Not Even Related to a Deaf Adult: Buffered by Monolingualism

That would be me, and we NERDAs compose the largest percentage of the membership of RID. Most of us do not understand what it means to be Deaf. We want to understand, and we sure try hard, but our reality as native, hearing speakers of English in the United States is one of extreme linguistic privilege. No matter what other oppressions we may experience, we communicate with the same language as nearly everyone one else around us. NERDAs need to understand that we are affected by living in a society that has done more, historically, than any other country to enforce monolingualism. Unless you live or work in a dense urban city, it is quite possible that you never hear another language spoken in day-to-day living. Most Americans are protected from exposure to even tasting what it might be like to not know the language that would enable you to talk with your neighbor, your child's teacher, shopkeepers and salespeople, peers in your classroom or a club, not to mention the doctor, police officer, realtor, banker, or the waitstaff at a restaurant where you must guarantee that there are no nuts or shellfish in the dish you want because you don't want to risk anaphylactic shock.

NERDAs certainly cannot conceive of the intrapersonal, deliberate, conscious planning necessary to predict when and where and for how long we'll need an interpreter, do not know the calculus of deciding why and for what reasons we'll need an interpreter, and never have to weigh the costs - time, focused mental energy, unpredictable emotional surges - that come along with deciding, "Yes, in this situation I do need an interpreter," or "No, in this situation I can manage without an interpreter." Nor do we have to deal with the fallout from misjudging any of these factors: such as discovering an interpreter is necessary when it had not seemed so, or that the need is much longer/shorter than anticipated, or that the whole effort was a complete waste of time.

Atlanta 2011: Experimenting with New Norms

National conferences of professional associations occur for very specific reasons:

• to further the organization's business and
  
• to provide members with professional development opportunities that are not available at home.
  

A critique offered by one of the other participants in the small group DEAF-FRIENDLY brainstorming sessions (described in the August 9 entry, "Embrace Change, Honor Tradition (RID 2009)" was that the conference focuses too much on training. In the immediate moment, I was most aware of the turn-taking dynamic - how her comment did not have any relation to mine - but I soon realized that her observation is significant. Why are we designing the national conference like an extension of an interpreter training program? Granted, many RID members are still in the early phases of their professional careers, but if we design the conference with students in mind, we generate a comfortable and familiar container for learning as usual.


No wonder, then, that many interpreters arrive and proceed to engage in comfortable, familiar, and usual ways! An alternative would be to take MJ Bienvenu's deconstruction by reversal to the extreme. This would create a professional development experience that would use the capacities of our national organization to the fullest potential. We already have the technology:

• knowledge of Deaf culture
  
• linguistic fluency in ASL and English
  
• professionally trained ASL-English interpreters
  
• extensive experience with interpreter request systems and accommodation services...
  

What we need is the will to apply the tools in an altered configuration, and a rationale to convince people to come.

A one-time experiment of mutual discovery

Instead of following the dominant, inherently oppressive model (accessibility provided for the Deaf), we reverse it (accessibility provided for the Hearing). This would generate an experience like none other. In some respects it would resemble an ASL Immersion retreat, and in some respects it would resemble the environment at residential schools for the Deaf. What it would offer is the intellectual and empathy-building experience of being the one who has to ask.

There would not need to be any commitment or promise to continue: we can see what happens, evaluate it, and then decide. If the storming phase re-emerges - so be it, that will be an honest, deep indicator of the organization's developmental status. If we do establish a foundation for new norms, well, that will be incredibly exciting and everyone who attends will have bragging rights for the rest of their life:

Before I get all dreamy-eyed about the potential for the Deaf community and sign language interpreters to make a significant contribution to global linguistic equality and transnational social justice (see yesterday's entry), we have some business to clean up.

Nothing written here should be taken as legal advice. I am not a lawyer - not even a legal interpreter. What I write is only my attempt to make sense of this messy situation for myself.

Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Officer Jay Keithley told a room crammed full of interpreters, "you don't want to be on the wrong side of the issue." It was the second information meeting he held during the conference of the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf. The room was inadequate for the 100 or so interested interpreters. Squeezing the chairs together, lining the walls, and sitting on all available floor space still left people overflowing into the hallway. Some were repeats, they had attended the first session (two days previous) and returned again, hoping for more clarity concerning liability and the definition of fraudulent behavior.

My motivation to attend was academic curiosity about criminal behavior in telecommunications (I am earning a phd in Communication); I was not prepared for the size of the crowd nor its unmasked anxiety. The sense I received from the palpable concern of interpreters who do work for a VRS company is that there seems to be a significant grey area of calls being made with questionable communicative content.
The Charges: Public Corruption & Fraud (someone got greedy)

The apparently violated law is a general conspiracy law, Conspiracy to Defraud the United States (Title 18, United States Code, Section 371), in which the accused "...unlawfully, knowingly, and intentionally combined and conspired with others to defraud the Federal Communications Commission and its agent, the National Exchange Carrier Association" (p. 2, Affidavit and Arrest Warrant). The National Exchange Carrier Association (NECA) receives regulatory fees from telecommunications companies' entire customer base, and pays back (technically, "reimburses") the VRS sub-division or subcontractor or independent provider based on minutes-per-month of (what they call, sic) "online video translation."

The Office of Inspector General (OIG) of the Federal Communications Commission (together, the FCC-OIG) noticed "a dramatic increase in the reimbursements" over the past four years. The increase in minutes used in January 2005 (1.4 million) to January 2009 (8.1 million) is 578%. (Check my math; this is an incredible percentage.) The difference in dollars is staggering: from $10.8 million (January 2005) to $51.2 million (January 2009) - $40.4 million dollars. Yep, if I had been anywhere near anything this big and illegal I would be quaking in my shoes too. What isn't known (or at least, what is not shared in the legal documents), is how much of the increase is legitimate due to the Deaf community's learning curve with the technology:

1. becoming comfortable with using it,
   
2. expanding the circle of family, friends, and work-related calls, and
   
3. realizing its capabilities in making general content from the internet accessible.
   

Personally, I would not be inclined to underestimate how eager the Deaf community is to access the wide world of information available so suddenly and - finally! - easily.

The Crime: generating minutes without providing interpretation - from China!?!

Nested down through two layers of companies and three contracts, a particular VRS provider in Texas, Mascom, "processed a large number of VRS calls from callers who specifically requested that no translation [sic] be done, or to numbers that required no translation [sic]" (p. 6, Affidavit and Arrest Warrant). The internal jargon used by VRS interpreters, as reported in the Affidavit and Arrest Warrant to describe "calls with no apparent legitimate purpose" is 'run calls' or callers' 'running calls'" (p. 6). Examples given include

• calls to lengthy podcasts that are not interpreted,
  
• calls to numbers where the caller is "put...on interminable hold,"
  
• calls when both the caller and the interpreter use what is called a "privacy screen" to block the incoming view (so neither can see the other and interpretation is impossible), and
  
• VRS interpreters calling themselves.
  

Interesting, the American Deaf community does not seem to be the main culprit (at least, not in this first big case). Records show that "there are hundreds of hours of billed calls that originate with Chinese IP addresses" (p. 6). (An IP address identifies the specific computer used by the caller making the call.) This particular Affidavit and Arrest Warrant approximates that 75% of the total 605,000 minutes billed by (and apparently paid to) the owner of the Texas company (Mascom), Kim E. Hawkins, were run calls. That's 453,750 minutes of the 6.7 million minute increase from 2005-2009: a mere drop in the bucket.

The information quoted in this blogpost is specific to the Texas case; a similar case has been discovered in Florida. Are there other run call scams going on out there? That is the reason why (in my opinion) the FCC made a showing at the RID convention: to rattle the cage and shake them loose. Officer Keithley explained how unusual it is for such an informational meeting to occur during an ongoing investigation; most questions of substance he had to duck or avoid because they related too closely to the details of the existing and ongoing investigation.

Coming Clean versus Hoping to Not Be Noticed?

To date, I have not worked for a Video Relay Service provider of interpretation services between spoken and signed languages. To a certain extent, my ignorance of the conditions of work and types of calls puts me in a similar 'outsider' position as the investigating officers from the FBI and FCC. I can understand their reluctance to specify which types of calls are fraudulent and which are legitimate - because who knows how creative people can be when they are deeply familiar with a system and want to take advantage of it. Still, there seems to me to be a very basic boundary: either your hands are up (interpreting), or your hands are idle. If you've been in situations that seem like running calls, then part of what needs to occur is a serious study and definition of what is a reasonable wait time (god only knows how long it can take to navigate automated menus) and what are expected/common conditions in which waiting makes sense (blowing one's nose, for instance, or going to refill a cup of tea, or taking another call). Some parity needs to be established between the freedoms non-deaf speaking people have for putting each other on hold (in monolingual situations) and the freedom of Deaf signing people to adhere to common norms (in multilingual situations).

The ethics of confidentiality, specifically when/where & with whom the lines are drawn, is another arena opened up for clarification by such overt criminal behavior. The immediate suggestion from Officer Keithley is

"if you see this kind of conduct, report it to your managers, and report to the FCC's Office of Inspector General at hotline@fcc.gov" or to jay.keithley@fcc.gov himself.

They will protect your anonymity to the extent possible within "law enforcement purposes." This guarantee is a bit plastic (for instance, you may be identified as a potential witness) but the interpreters who cooperated in the Texas investigation into Mascom are not named in the Affidavit or Arrest Warrant. Their anonymity appears to be protected to the extent that they serve "as a source of information for law enforcement officials" and (presumedly, although this was not stated) are innocent of "knowingly and intentionally" breaking the law. If you were stupid and got caught up in this before you realized how wrong it is, well, its time for another roll of the dice.

Time and Timing: Preparation is Key

The list of ideas and suggestions offered in the DEAF-FRIENDLY workshop (described in yesterday's entry) ranged from the general:

• emphasize the visual
  
• always use ASL
  

to the specific:

• use an FM Loop to mark off the area where sign-to-voice interpretation will be provided
  
• fine people a dollar for speaking instead of signing
  
• draw a blue line to mark Signing Zones from Speaking Zones
  

As I watched, two things came together in my head, one being that we all know what needs to be done. The other was an idea inspired by the way MJ Bienvenu made her points about audism by flipping the subject or object of particular sentences from an identity/logic center based on being "hearing" (not Deaf) to its mirror image presented from a Deaf-centric worldview.

I mentioned laziness concerning the ASL Zone on the third day of the conference, and have to confess that the admission did not serve to improve my commitment to only signing. I appreciated the man in the DEAF-FRIENDLY workshop who talked about being naturally drawn to hearing-and-speaking, but I cringed a bit at the guy who used the example of carrying a beverage in one hand and a suitcase in another - as if that is the common instance which Deaf people are concerned by. Not. I rehearsed my reasons for not always signing:

• I was in Europe and away from ASL for nearly a year,
  
• my ideas are often not clear (even to myself, shhh!) until I try to articulate them,
  
• spoken English is my native language so I can say what I mean more easily than I can sign what I mean,
  
• my eyes get tired and my brain shuts down,
  
• etcetera.
  

No matter how hard I seek to justify them, these are all just excuses for continuing to exercise privilege. Betty Colonomos mentioned the United States being "such a monolingual country." I agree with her: insisting on spoken English when Deaf people are present is the cultural celebration of English (only). The ease with which we slide into speech, and the raft of rationales we create to protect our own linguistic comfort are indicators of resistance to equality.

But here's the rub. While many of us knew (or sensed, or learned along the way) that we ought to be signing, the formal marketing of the conference does not make this requirement clear. So what happens is that people arrive with expectations (conscious and latent) that are either contradicted or fulfilled and then they react based on how well the actual interactions "fit" with those expectations (which they may not have even realized were 'there' until something triggers them into awareness). Suddenly, disappointment and disapproval become evident, and people are thrust into the position of needing to process the fact that their expectations have somehow/suddenly come into conflict with others' expectations. Affinity groups form along ideological lines, such as the culturally Deaf and their Allies "versus" the Hearing people whose comfort level in ASL is markedly less than their comfort level in English and their friends. Other identity-based groups usually also solidify around their respective centers, and solo outliers who don't perceive any place where they belong either observe, reserving their insights for themselves, or choose not to participate at all.

In contrast with what I've observed (and participated in) previously, these divisions arose rather gently at the end of this conference. I consider this a tribute to two temporal factors: one immediate and one developmental. As frustrated as Deaf people were with the less-than-ideal communication environment, the atmosphere did not become hostile. As defensive as Hearing people were about being called out for speaking instead of signing, they also did not resort to blaming or other forms of reactionary guilt. I suggest that this particular climate was created by President Moose and the Board's leadership in establishing their own principled protocol to communicate in ASL. As leaders, they set and held the bar in the Here-and-Now.

Stages of Group Development

In human interaction, there are always many things happening at the same time. This is the reason why the most popular answer of interpreter-trainers to the questions, "What would you do?" or "What does it mean?" is: "It depends." The "it" could hinge on which interlocutor's perspective you take, which outcome you hope to achieve, the significance of affect in the specific utterance, how this situation fits within the shared history of interlocutors, whether the interlocutors will interact again in the future or not, and so on. The point is simply that no communication ever occurs in a vacuum - every utterance and act of silence is situated in space (here or there) and time (past, present, future).

Imagine RID as a group (of the type called an organization) constituted by criteria distinguishing who is a member and who is not. The histories about the organization show two clear phases identified by Lou Fant as the moment when membership shifted from cultural insiders and close friends of the Deaf to a larger population requiring acculturation and accommodation. Looked at historically (over the long term), these two phases correspond, roughly, with the first two stages of group development as identified by U.S. and British social science researchers in the 1940s and '50s. Much later, simple labels were applied as a shorthand way of referring to patterns of behavior and issues evident in each stage:

• forming (when people come together and begin to get organized as a group), and


• storming (when the various interests and ambitions of members emerge).

It was helpful for me to realize that I entered the profession (in 1993) well into the era of the storm. And MJ's experience - arriving on the scene a decade earlier - probably was one of the first public markers that the first forming stage was really over: under other circumstances (a different space) and another time, her interventions would not have generated so much passion on either 'side.' As it was, asking for recognition of ASL and, later, for an end to a particular performance took on iconic status as events around which people's interests became plain (whether they wanted them to be so apparent or not).

A possibility began dancing in my mind as I've sought to synthesize 'all the things going on during the conference week': specifically, the clash of generations (older-younger), the effects & potentials of communications technology, and what I know about the next stage of group development: norming.

I wonder if we might actually be ready for a paradigm shift . . .

It was a well-chosen theme for the 24th national conference of the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf, although one requires knowledge of the organization's history in order to be able to fully appreciate the dual challenge of embracing change and honoring tradition. Depending upon point-of-view and experiences, any given change can be viewed negatively or positively, and tradition can be variously described. President Cheryl Moose (pictured, watching ("listening") during the DEAF FRIENDLY workshop) interpreted the motto for us in her speech at the Opening Ceremony, using an ASL sign for "embrace" that indicates taking a thing from outside of yourself and tucking it into the front pocket of your heart. The ASL sign that she preferred for "honor" is the sign usually glossed as CHERISH. The thing is, if you are relatively new to the field or have only attended a few conferences or less, then you have no way to assess what is traditional or what constitutes change.

The history lessons came at the end of the conference, during a workshop by MJ Bienvenu (The Heart of RID), the Closing Ceremony (RID - The Musical), and a strategy session on making the organization - and particularly the next conference - more DEAF-FRIENDLY. These three events exposed longterm (historical) dynamics, which (especially if taken together) drew out current group tensions. Beyond the quantitative indicators of growth, there are qualitative indicators of change - and resistance to change! - showing which tensions are shaping group development now. If one can get some intellectual distance, our own topics of conversation and modes of interacting provide us with the means to measure how much we have grown (individually and collectively) in dealing with them.

Stuck in the Past?

Maria Ruiz-Williams and Amie Seiberlich presented a "musically inspired ASL storytelling" (see Sherry Hicks) performance of Lou Fant's Silver Threads: a personal look at the first 25 years of the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf. I do not know if it was by plan or coincidence that MJ Bienvenu's history from 1983-1991 fit so closely with Fant's timeframe (1964-1989), but the selections presented by Ruiz-Williams and Seiberlich in their interpretation provide a contextualization that could serve as organizational background in which to understand how and why MJ was so shocked by the organization's resistance (in 1983) to her initiative requesting official recognition of ASL. She was not born radical, she was made to appear radical by the intransigence of people reluctant to share power.

The change to celebrate is that MJ was personally invited by the President of RID, key board members, and Deaf advisors to deconstruct any lingering audism evident in the organization. MJ delivered with surgical precision, using RID's official webpages to hold up a mirror to the deep audist roots still evident to anyone who knows how to recognize them. An equivalent would be if, for instance, the Interpreting Directorate at the European Parliament invited advocates for linguistic equality from the new languages to publicly critique inadequacies in the delivery of interpreting services for the institution as a whole. Another change evident this year at RID is the standing ovation MJ received for the information and her courage, returning to Philadelphia (the scene of a media-sensationalized event in the early '90s concerning interpreted music), and persisting in her educational efforts to engage a large population of very slow learners.

What has not changed is the resistance to being an ASL-based organization. This is a kind of "tradition" that we could probably do without, if us hearing people could come to recognize the many ways we play into the linguistic hegemony of spoken English. What I wonder, though, is the extent to which hearing (non-deaf) resistance to immersion in visual communication is coupled - dynamically - with a kind of Deaf kneejerk reaction against even the hint of music? I agree it was too much to have the Opening Reception and the Closing Ceremony both rely on interpreted song, but - especially for the Closing Ceremony - the point was the history, the music was incidental. I wonder two things about the displays of anger and disappointment that I witnessed among some audience members during the RID Musical performance that were repeated during the DEAF-FRIENDLY workshop. "No one stopped it," one person said, "but they should have." First, it seems important to ask, how much is this resistance simply generational? Is the older Deaf activist core passing on a prejudice? I realize that Sean Forbes' capital-D Deaf cred may be questioned, but I would be stunned if anyone doubts Rosa Lee's. I am not aware of any young Deaf people who were upset by either performance at RID (which doesn't mean that they weren't, but I did not witness it). The second hypothesis involves a variation of struggle between the culturally Deaf and the Hard-of-Hearing (which, audiologically, includes both capital-D, culturally Deaf, like children of Deaf parents who learned ASL as their native language, and the audiologically deaf, for whatever reason and from non-deaf as well as deaf origins).

At any rate, the new potentials of communications technology open up so many possibilities that it does seem like it would not beyond conception to generate forms of entertainment that are visually-based and reflective of traditional internal Deaf cultural aesthetics.

RID Conferences as A Professional Development Experience:

Janis Cole and Lewis Merkin facilitated the DEAF-FRIENDLY workshop, which I participated in with a mix of pride and dismay. I'm old enough, and been around long enough, to be able to recognize my younger self in some of the new interpreters. Of the more than sixty people who stayed, I recognized somewhat less than a third, a comforting familiarity (we're still in this together), but because the numbers were skewed to newer/younger members the discussion went that way, too. The beautifully-orchestrated beginning to a short de-briefing of the conference experience transformed quickly into a venue for diagnosis and performance for a specific demographic: white hearing women. As I watched one after another raise their hand to be called upon, I resolved to keep my butt in my chair no matter how inspired I was to say something. ;-)

What happened then - because I *did* sit on my idea! - was being perhaps too eager to share it in my own small group. They really wanted to define DEAF-FRIENDLY, but I wanted to jump to envisioning implementation. The experience was frustrating, but I did feel as if I understood what was happening. We were given a list of questions to choose among and discuss, someone immediately asked about defining DEAF-FRIENDLY but I jumped in, asking, "Can I jump to another topic? I have an idea about setting up the next conference...." I shared it, they watched me (we were all signing), and when I finished another member in the group asked, "Why do you think it is that we always talk about students' learning when the topic is about being DEAF-FRIENDLY?" At the time, I could perceive absolutely no relationship between what she said and what I had said. This did not seem to be a turn in a conversation, not listening, but waiting for the next gap in which to speak.

Hmmm. I observed how the rest of the discussion went in our small group. The next speaker went into a lengthy discussion of how "we always talk about using ASL, making it policy, over and over..." He admitted, being hearing, to having a natural tendency to follow verbal speech, and then shared a litany of personal experiences. I was reminded of a comment Betty Colonomos made at the beginning of the Business Meeting when we were discussing the Standing Rules: that people have no voice out there in the world, but we have one here and people need to use it. So everyone got their chance to speak but we did not actually converse. Why is that? I think (in this case) it had to do with time and timing. Because this event came at the end of the conference, people really needed to debrief. The immediate felt need was to process this experience in relation to the past. People with more practice reflecting on these kinds of dynamics were able to bring their awareness more into the present, but the move to imagining the future was premature. The ground was not prepared either prior to or during the conference, and we did not have enough time in this venue to wade through the individual processing until everyone was at a sufficiently-sated stage of self-disclosure and internal satisfaction to shift, collectively, to action planning.

In the end, I think what we generated as a group in this workshop was a venue for hearing interpreters to vent. One of the first Deaf speakers said, forthrightly, that she felt that most of us "cannot walk and sign at the same time." Another Deaf person commented on the lack of tolerance most hearing people have (at least in this context) "for missing a little bit once in awhile." That observation reminded me of my experience with other languages in Europe, which I described in a blogpost at the time as "cotton 'round the brain." In a discussion following that blog entry, I tried to describe how awareness of perceptible stimuli simply shifts depending on the language one knows - or does not know. The main message I gleaned from the way the DEAF-FRIENDLY discussion unfolded in our small group is that it seems we assume being DEAF-FRIENDLY means being non-deaf/hearing unfriendly: as if the two are

a) extreme opposites and
b) in competition with each other.

I do not believe this needs to be the case.

"Where does he get this?" I heard another workshop participant exclaim after David N. Evans' flash animation eye blink slide illustrating the natural coordination of the reading mind with the biological moistening mechanisms that lubricate the eyeball.

"Stern and Dunham (1990) ... noted task demands affect when one blinks (referred to as blink location). For example, readers tend to place their blinks at 'semantically appropriate places in the text,' such as the end of a sentence, paragraph, or page" (italics in original, bold added)

Coordination between when (timing) and where (location, the "places") is the focal point of most of my research. The two examples of eye blinking during reading (English text) and as grammar and prosody during signed utterances (ASL specific) inspire a hypothesis about Mikhael Bakhtin's original, conceptual use of the term "utterance" in his analyses of discourse in novels and the uptake of the term by researchers of spontaneous spoken language in real (nonfictional) face-to-face interaction. Could Bakhtin have, intuitively or subconsciously, noted a physiological coordination of eye blinks with the spoken production? Or felt his own blinking while he read?

David swears he did not color coordinate his wardrobe with the background, but he did follow Deaf norms and tell us (hundreds of participants) that someone had informed him of the match. That's a concrete example of the kind of co-incidence of space (place/location) and time (during the moment of his presentation) that we all could learn to follow. (A Facebook group, perhaps, tracking David's presentation wardrobe until the next RID conference in Atlanta, 2011?!) During and after his workshop, I have been remembering various sources of information about the eyes and vision. For instance, Eye Movement Desensitization and Response, which is a treatment for trauma.

The way I understand EMDR (simply) is, "Memories are linked in networks that contain related thoughts, images, emotions, and sensations." If I recall the explanations of EMDR when it was first introduced to me, the network of memories can include particular (specific, repeated) eye movement, which can be deliberately altered through practice, disrupting parts of the linkage that re-create the emotions of the trauma. "Learning occurs when new associations are forged with material already stored in memory." I also thought about a recent lesson from a yoga teacher, about using the opposite side eye 'to lead' when turning, because it provides the perceptual system with different input than leading with the same eye on the same side (i.e., when turning to the right, the right eye tends to go there first, leading the rest of the body into that future time and space). By disrupting the habitual routine, we train ourselves to be more open to the unexpected, instead of relying on typical expectations.

Also fresh in mind is my friend Anuj's recent phd defense on the topic of Risk Perception and Awareness Training for young/new drivers, in which eye gaze is tracked and discussed with students, improving their awareness and thus reducing the risk of accidental death. I was struck by how unaware driver's are of

1. the significance of looking,
   
2. of knowing where to look, and
   
3. being deliberate about what one is looking for.
   

I frequently witness a similar unconsciousness with hearing (non-deaf) people when they "see" a Deaf person (or an interpreter) signing but do not realize this is language! Most people know it is rude to interrupt another person while they are talking, but this very basic etiquette often vanishes when the mode of communication is visual instead of auditory. Part of the rudeness stems, I suspect, not just from different conceptions of time (the hurry-hurry of hearing life, the long-goodbyes of deaf life) but also from different perceptual experiences of time. You could say that an ASL brain is processing in one dimension, while a spoken English brain is processing in another dimension. When persons used to using only one of the two languages communicate with each other (with or without an interpreter), a phase accommodation must be made - by one or both. When an interpreter is involved, the process of dimensional juggling or phase shifting is made blatantly obvious. There are repeat patterns of the co-incidence of time/timing and space/place during interpretation that compose sites of cultural co-creation, as well as opportunities for repeating oppression, practicing empowerment, and experimenting with cooperation.

Notes:
* re: "Hymnal" for the conference handouts booklet: "I told the interpreters to use that word," David explained in ASL. The interpreter voiced this into English, adding (deadpan), "it would not have been the word choice the interpreter would otherwise have used."

Business Meeting, Redux

The process of the RID Business Meeting has a similar feel to many of the sessions held by Members of the European Parliament - this is TRUE BUSINESS, serious slogwork the ramifications of which are potentially huge. We have had no problem reaching and maintaining quorum, although retaining those members who do come to experience it for the first time is a challenge. Ken, one of the stagehands hired from a local company to run the cameras, was entertained by the hour we took to amend the standing rules on the presence of breastfeeding mothers during the Business Meeting. I know - it may seem ludicrous, yet this attention to detail reveals something essential about how we approach our work as interpreters. Inclusivity and acceptance of difference are core values. Diversity, agency, and empowerment permeate the heart of this organization - even when we fail, we recognize the failure on the basis of ideals we are striving to achieve.

Increasing the participation of RID members who do not seem to pay attention to the organization's business is a major challenge. Ken, as an outsider to our organization, was simply comparing our group theatre to the performances he usually films (and, let me tell you, he indicated we are far from the extremes he has witnessed! Apologies if anyone is disappointed, grin. Ken elaborates: "This can be compared to our union meetings, we have peaks and valleys too!") An RID member who has attended several conferences but never been to a business meeting before yesterday told me, "I was there for the breastfeeding session; that was enough for me." She got the impression (it seemed to me) that that particular "session" is "all" that we do. Nothing could be further from the truth.

One needs some endurance to ride this ship, because the destination is distant and the path arduous. But we do make progress; the growth is measurable and substantive. The Certification Maintenance Program was instituted as a policy goal in 1993 and achieved full implementation (including the degree requirement for all new certifications) in 2009. For a service organization experiencing exponential growth in membership, fifteen years is a respectable time frame to grow an integrated infrastructure that can sustain our profession through the coming century. We live in an era of unprecedented contact with peoples who used to occupy only the remotest fringes of awareness. The totality of the earth's interconnected human systems of commerce and well-being become more apparent every year: events like the financial crisis, evidence of climate change, and ongoing threats of war as a "solution" to local and global challenges of competition and limited resources serve to emphasize the real extent of interdependence.

As a democratic organization, RID represents U.S. style democracy. The major issue during the second half of the business meeting involved ways to increase participation of members in voting (a right often considered as an optional privilege instead of as an obligatory responsibility). The debate was long and involved, with the original motion evolving, through amendments, from the narrow tactic of granting proxies to a broader strategy of investigating the potentials of technology for increasing both accessibility and voting.

Part of what we need is a sexy internal marketing program that inspires interest in the nuts and bolts work of the organization. If members are curious, entertained, or otherwise realize personal/professional benefits of involvement, then they will come. I can imagine, for instance, a short video-commercial featuring Vice-President Robert Balaam's flirtatious proclamation,

Or, a series of clips showing Dave Calvert, patiently explaining (yet again), "There are no Points of Clarification, only Points of Order," followed by the member who later introducing her turn with, "I have a point of something." Or yet again, a series of the numerous instructions about introducing oneself, and apologies for forgetting, including the member who introduced herself as Oprah Winfrey.

Looking Back

I missed the conference in San Francisco (although I was gratified that Dan, Mr Politeness himself, insisted that he personally missed me, haha), but I did blog from San Antonio (July 2005, listed in chronological order):

• at Angela's table
• Legal Interpreting
• debriefing RID presentation
• impartiality

There have been a few other reminders from the past: presenting at Alaska's State Conference (where the group relations concept of "self-authorization" was in full swing, and you can tell that I was really excited about it, smile, from the number of preliminary/anticipatory blogposts, in chronological order, 2004, listed here mainly for my benefit, lots of anecdotes about events/experiences during my own interpreting, and for anyone who wants proof that blogging improves with practice):

• Alaska! (Feb 5)
• Going to Alaska! (April 19)
• drama (April 23)
• Juggling (May 2)
• Alaska Data Day 1 (May 5)
• juggling! (August 24)
• virgin experience (really about CIT, but references Alaska; Sept 29)

In the meantime, I met one of the interpreters involved in a situation I wrote up (for the Views - oh if I could but remember!) about an impressive instance of interpreter decision-making, and someone who reminded me blogging about a job (which I do, periodically, obscuring identificatory details): it might have been one of those I've written about the interpreter moving instead of sitting still, such as time, sightlines and the concept of visibility.

ASL Zone


As we came down the hall from the elevators to the lobby on the first day of the conference, Cat reminded me: "We're entering an ASL Zone." There is always tension at these conferences whether to sign ASL or speak English. The easy (lazy?) choice is English (and I am guilty more often than I care to admit). I was impressed by the announcement that all Board Members will only use ASL, even if addressed in spoken English. Creating a conference environment that is accessible and welcoming to Deaf participants is not only respectful, but I think it is also crucial to distinguishing our field's unique practice of intercultural communication. We are dealing not only with different languages, but also with different sensory modalities (vision & gesture) than spoken language. Being comfortable in environments where the substance of information is predominately visual, rather than auditory, is absolutely necessary to competence. The sensory experience of watching Bill Moody's keynote presentation in ASL without voice interpretation is a pleasure hard to describe, as if the ears relax and sound fades to mere background murmur. Carla Mather's workshop was like this, too...all communication was in ASL except for some of the group work where people chose to use their first language, English, rather than struggle with articulating new and complex concepts in (what is for most) their second language.

The unification factor of ASL is also hard to overemphasize. All signers do not look the same! By percentage, here in the U.S., a large percentage appears Caucasian (a demographic that has been visibly changing over the last several conferences, but ethnicity has never been the common denominator. Women still outnumber men in the profession but there are a lot of guys here. Lesbians compose a significant percentage of our ranks, but sexual orientation is simply another facet of inherent heterogeneity. In the case of the Deaf community, language links people across difference rather than unifying an already established ethnic, religious, or national basis of identification. It is not so much that we know the language, but that when we sign together, we are a community. It is quite beautiful to see hundreds of conversations flashing on hands up close and personal, closing distance across the room or the street, occurring even through windows. Boundaries between 'outside' and 'inside' diminish when so many people who look so un-alike talk with each other, animated and engaged.

Measured Debate (from B to V (voting)

In addition to the specialized training and continuing education opportunities provided by this conference, the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf holds an extensive Business Meeting. Eight hours are scheduled for the organization's business this year, which is conducted according to Robert's Rules of Order. Anyone interested in the sophisticated and expert application of this arcane decision-making system in a contemporary context would enjoy observing the precise use of discussion, points of order and points of information, referrals, and calls to question utilized by organization members. It did take us nearly an hour and a half to work through amendments to the Standing Rules before we began the actual business agenda, but the warm-up served several functional purposes, including shifting the tone from the pedagogical discourse of teaching and learning, acclimating members to the use of the procedures, and introducing some of the cast of characters who contribute to navigating this massive ship through stormy waters.

Being interpreters, we are concerned with getting the language of motions and amendments exactly right, so the debates can go on for quite some time. The patience and tenacity of members to stick with every tiny development, considering the ramifications, evaluating the fit within the pre-established organizational structure, imagining the outcomes of implementation and then presenting reasoned arguments for or against, and utilizing Robert's Rules to intervene or re-direct, are testimony to deeply-rooted professionalism.

The tenor of debate and discussion was uniform for all motions, so if you were unaware that a power struggle between the Membership and the Board of Directors was being played out you probably would not have identified it. I do not mean to imply that the Board has tried to resist or limit member oversight - in fact, I would say that the evidence shows the Board being responsive. But, the fact is that an unpopular decision was taken without adequate member input. There is separation (imposed by historical factors) between sign language interpreters who work with adults in nearly any setting, and sign language interpreters who work with school-age children in educational settings. Educational interpreters want and need the status of certification and membership in an organization such as RID, but the mechanisms for how to accomplish their inclusion on a basis that legitimizes them without compromising already established professional standards is proving to be a challenge. At any rate, the Membership did successfully vote into place an amendment to the Bylaws limiting the Board's ability to take action on aspects relating to membership, certification, and testing without involvement and authorization from the members (my paraphrase, not the exact wording).

Demand-Control Schema

I am sure that there is a way to translate that institutional level of intergroup dynamics into the logic of Dean and Pollard's Demand-Control Schema (DC-S), which is the most pervasive model in the field of sign language interpreting for managing the dilemmas that arise inevitably from the dynamics involved in processes of simultaneous interpretation. After the Business Meeting closed for the day, Eileen Forestal presented this model to Deaf interpreters, giving some fifty workshop participants plenty of opportunity to engage with and consider the effectiveness of the DC-S for their own work in the field. There is a parallel to be drawn, by the way, between Certified Deaf Interpreters and spoken language interpreters working from a relay in the European Parliament. That parallel is one-dimensional, however, as spoken language interpreters in the Parliament are always the last link in the chain (because they work only into one target language, not back and forth between alternating source/target languages), whereas the CDI may be conceived of as "last" but also transforms into the first link in the return chain.

There are several concurrent workshops so keep in mind that whatever you read here is a particularized view based on the choices that most interest me.

Carla Mathers makes logical reasoning entertaining, presenting (and contrasting) the typical modes of thinking that are drilled (by professional training) into 'the interpreter's brain' and 'the lawyer's brain.' Conference planners knew she would draw a large crowd so they put her in the Grand Ballroom for this five-hour extended workshop on legal interpreting. I am always impressed with the variety and number of volunteers who agree to practice the application of new skills and techniques on stage for the rest of us to observe. Because we so often work in teams, and probably also because we simply must be seen, and no matter how shy we might be about skill level or making mistakes in public - it is the best way to improve skills and contribute to the general learning of the profession as a whole. Erin, a workshop participant, described her best/most important learning from this workshop:

Carla created a bunch of scenarios based on common occurrences, and asked participants to gather in groups to practice applying lawyer's logic. Volunteers then share their best attempt: stating the issue(s), the rule, their application of the rule and subsequent conclusion. Also, they have to identify which kind of logical reasoning they used to make the argument. For instance, Scenario 3 is: "A qualified ASL interpreter is assigned to interpret for a deaf witness. Once the witness shows up and introductions are made, it becomes apparent that using only a hearing interpreter will be ineffective." Participants work together by preference, some in pairs or trios, others in larger groupings.
The reports made by volunteers on stage often involve a few different kinds of performance: the literal report (very professional), the tangent (someone venting about an issue they feel is relevant), and various types of humor. There are side commentaries of the presenter and volunteers about the content, about each other, and about the interaction, as well as jokes at the expense of the profession and teasing - or innuendo - about known (or perceived) personality quirks, likes, and dislikes. Despite the seriousness of (for instance) guaranteeing the 6th amendment right of defendants to confrontation and cross-examination of witnesses, we can find lots of ways to make learning enjoyable, so much so that at one point Carla laughed:

Meanwhile, we are also able to learn collectively from errors such as leaping to conclusions. In Scenario 3, for instance, the first several reports assumed that a Certified Deaf Interpreter (CDI) was needed. The scenario required a concrete solution so, in order to accomplish the assignment, people had to decide upon a single answer. Still, one might expect a variety of possible solutions. The apparent group think was challenged by a participant and validated by Carla - the witness may need, for instance, a trilingual interpreter because they know another spoken language, or an interpreter specializing in a particular kind of mental health disorder. As much as we need to promote the use of CDIs, we also need to remember to be attentive to the particularities of each case and argue for accommodations specific to the case rather than applying a general rule.

The implications of Carla's legal training in regards to the interpreter's role are fascinating. Advocacy is normative in this system, which is a radical departure from (for instance) the possibility and/or value of advocacy in the role of spoken language interpreters in the European Parliament. The type of logical advocacy presented by Carla also differs from individualized caregiving. Legal advocacy is directed to the efficacy of the system-as-a-whole, rather than to adverse effects on any particular person or population.

After lunch (with nefarious company) at Popeye's, (in which every answer always depends on a range of situational and contextual factors), I went to Jack Hoza's workshop, "Beyond Monitoring: A New Paradigm in Teaming." Jack presented some of the research that is described in detail in his forthcoming book (November, 2009), Teamwork as Collaboration and Interdependence. He explained that a literature review shows that teaming (in sign language interpretation) has gone through three phases, which he labels

1. Independent Turn-Taking


2. Monitoring


3. Collaboration and Interdependence

Depending upon the situation and the teammate, I have used all three versions at different times, but I would say my training fits somewhere in-between the monitoring and collaboration models. As mentioned by Jack and also by Bill Moody last night during his Keynote, the Open Process Model described by Molly Wilson offers the most collaborative possibilities because it includes the deaf person(s) in the process. (As always, I wonder, [warning: sidebar!] why do we tilt the balance of inclusion to the deaf as if the non-deaf/hearing interlocutors have no stake in the process themselves? Is this compensatory behavior? Is it - in effect - a kind of inadvertent collusion with systems of oppression, a presumed "ally" and "empowered" cooperation that, through exclusion of the other party serves to reinforce the privilege of that party rather than redressing the actual imbalance?) [end sidebar]

Jack organized the results of his qualitative study into six types of strategies, three of which involve information about content. The most common strategy is confirmation - a finding that elicited some questions from the audience (and intrigues me, too). Jack put his emphasis, however, on a combination of two other strategies, the second and third most used, message feeding and collaboration, respectively. Together, these two compose nearly half of all strategies used by the team interpreters in his study. Message feeding is strictly informational (providing this lexical term or that fingerspelled word), whereas the examples of collaboration are in line with the Open Process Model, in which, for instance, the lead interpreter signals the need for a message feed or other support and the team interpreter responds with provision of the needed support or actually negotiates what is needed without losing the on-going thread of simultaneous interpretation.

Jack distinguished between the two team interpreters by using an abbreviated version of Betty Colonomos' pedagogical model of the cognitive process of simultaneous interpretation. In these terms, the lead interpreter completes all phases and generates target language, the team completes most parts of the cognitive process - all except production of the target language. The team monitors the lead interpreter's target language production and remains ready to provide support as necessary. Although we all work solo at times, it is most characteristic to work in teams, and the best teams are always proactive rather than passive. This is one of the key distinguishing features of so-called "community" interpreting compared with so-called "conference" interpreting. The spoken language interpreters with whom I spoke and observed at the European Parliament (in 2005 and 2008-2009) work almost exclusively in the {what is for us} archaic model of Independent Turn-Taking, with rare dips into the second phase of Monitoring.

However, there is a different kind of cooperation performed by spoken language interpreters at the European Parliament that exceeds the immediate boundaries of each language team (which I am conceiving of as the interpreters assigned to working in the booth for each particular language). This cooperation is dispersed in space - it is among and between the teams in each working booth. Rather than collaborating with their immediate colleagues, interpreters working 'independently' coordinate turn-taking among themselves both internal to the booth and 'externally' with the interpreters working in other booths. Keep in mind that each spoken language interpreter in the European Parliament knows several languages (from three to seven, on average), so part of what they are coordinating is which interpreter in the booth understands the source language (there are twenty-three official languages, any of which could be used at any time), in order to render the booth's target language.

One of the puzzles that my research engages are the relative strengths and weaknesses of "collaboration" (defined as an 'open process' of negotiation/support among interpreters , possibly including interlocutors) as a strategy of interpreted intercultural communication and "cooperation" (defined as a more rigid process of ensuring one's performance as part of a larger system) as a strategy of interpreted intercultural communication. Are innovations possible for borrowing between or merging the two types? Are there criteria for when one type is more suited than the other type? Is there a possibility of fluid switching between the two types within the same scene, or can they only occur exclusively? Any comments, questions, critiques, or other input that you would like to share will be appreciated!

Meanwhile, I met a role model yesterday. Ivan writes beautifully upside-down!

"Are you with that RID group?" I was chatting with the hotel staffer who was so proud to have delivered our waitlisted refrigerator. When I answered, "Yeah," he exclaimed, "You people are all right! You can stay as long as you like!"

Cat ("It's 5:00 somewhere!") and I arrived the night before the conference began, which allowed a bit of reconnoiter before the press of nearly 3000 conference attendees reached full peak. This is the largest conference in the organization's history - which means it is the largest gathering of sign language interpreters ever, anywhere in the world. The conference program includes workshops on linguistics, ethical decision-
making, and interpreting in medical, legal, educational, and social service settings, among others. There are interpreters here from across the United States, Canada, and Colombia (Welcome!), as well as representatives from the National Association of Black Interpreters, the World Association of Sign Language Interpreters, the World Federation of the Deaf, and the National Association of the Deaf (NAD). I have already said hello to interpreters and Deaf colleagues from my training days in Indiana, professional work in Vermont and Massachusetts, the Allies conferences . . . the sense of 'coming home' is palpable: a quality that is both poignant and comforting.

From casual conversations to professional presentations, I am re-encountering familiar themes from the past and noticing new permutations. Technology is big Big BIG and there is so much to say about the unfolding practices of using video relay services, including scandal (an FBI investigation into fraudulent billing), and the reduction of face-to-face interaction. One workshop participant in the NAD forum on "Trends and Challenges within the Interpreting Profession," described it like this:

"With video relay Deaf people have the choice to turn on and turn off an interpreter in an instant . . . We see many young Deaf people who don't want to be bothered by a relationship with an interpreter, they want to be able to turn us on and turn us off."

Spoken language interpreters at the European Parliament know all about that! What's different is that they have always worked through a machine as their main mode and smaller face-to-face type settings are the anomaly (they call it whispering). Meanwhile, what sign language interpreters have going for us is the active involvement of consumers, something which the system of interpretation in the European Parliament is designed to minimize. NAD President Bobbie Beth Scoggins, along with two Board Members, Judith Gilliam and Nancy Bloch, ran an impressive forum which elicited many interesting observations from the hearing and Deaf interpreters present. They set a great stage for the public signing of the "Memorandum of Understanding" between the current Presidents of RID and NAD formalizing the commitment to collaboration and reaffirming the commitment of the two organizations to work together that was initiated in 1994.

As I watched the three Deaf community leaders respond to questions, comments, and suggestions from the audience, I was struck by themes that remain unchanged... and by the steadfast refusal of Bobbie, Nancy, and Judith to be dragged down by the persistence of problems. Instead, they choose to celebrate success and focus on attainable goals for the future. The NIC certification testing, for instance, is the result of a hard-won cooperation from RID with NAD. When I entered the field, RID was so institutionally resistant to Deaf criticism that the NAD went about creating its own separate certification system. Now the NAD is focusing on the increasing professional status and diversification of employment possibilities for well-educated Deaf people in every field imaginable - this requires more highly-skilled and specialized interpretation services, and expands the reality of Deaf people becoming professional, certified interpreters themselves.

Her statement is a play on the famous statement by George Veditz, who claimed, "As long as there are Deaf people on the Earth, there will always be sign language." The two quotes reveal the tenor of respective eras: Mr Veditz lived in a time of international bans on sign language, miscegenation laws, and forced sterilizations to try and eliminate Deaf populations. I always wonder about the absence of hearing consumers from most of the conversations about sign language interpreting, but I realized today - perhaps more clearly than ever before - that hearing people do not have to be here advocating for the quality of interpretation. "Not needing to be here" is sure evidence of institutional, status-based power. But the absence of the third party in interpreted interaction consistently warps comprehensive understanding of the intercultural communication practice of participating in simultaneous interpretation.

Meanwhile, Ms Scoggins lives in a time when technology makes language difference seem easily surmountable. The attitude that just because a hearing person is auditorily equipped to learn languages, then they simply should, is a manifestation of the privilege of the powerful. Why should minority or immigrant spoken language speakers not receive interpretation when needed?

There were other highlights and lessons of the day. I caught the first hour of Paula Gajewski-Mickelson's "preliminary preliminary" (smile) report on how interpreter training programs (ITPs) are teaching and training "ethical fitness." I had lunch with Larry, Mo, and Curly (supposedly from Kentucky), who accused me of wanting it all (I do, I do!) but did not tell me about the knife (I don't think I really want to know!) Current RID President Cheryl Moose described going to her first RID convention in 1993 in Evansville, IN, where I also contributed my first-time attendance to the grand total of 475. RID gained our 15,000th member recently, a Deaf interpreter from Chicago, Mr. Vanous Washington.

Finally, nothing could have outshone Ms. Lillian Beard - neither in the film footage shown by Bill Moody nor her own irrepressible, one hundred-year-old self on stage. She told us everything we need to know about how to do this job, based on her decades of work as a volunteer until her first paid assignment - as the first interpreter to pull a shift at the historic meeting in 1964 at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana when RID was born.

"I learned a lot," she said, "by not feeling that I knew it all." The audience applauded nearly every statement she made, recognizing in her simple diction the truths that motivate us to help each other serve each other and together accomplish what none of us can do alone.