Reflexivity

This post distills a series of thoughts from reading three different texts: The Heroic Model of Science (Chapter 1, Telling the Truth about History by Appleby, Hunt & Jacob, 1991); The Talmud and the Internet by Jonathan Rosen (2000), and an Interview with Ilan Stavans by Richard Birnbaum (@ 2003).
Three threads are primary: language, interaction, and science. “Language” is engaged theoretically and in practice, particularly the practices of interpretation. Although the references in the three selected texts refer mainly to written translations, I extrapolate ‘down’ to in-the-moment generation of understanding in everyday talking with each other, based on cooperation or agreement between people about meaning. I also extrapolate ‘up’ – or at least ‘over’ – to the interlinguistic skills that are most obviously evident in simultaneous interpretation. As to interaction, there are numerous levels from the microsocial to the macrosocial and the temporal to the ephemeral. The history of science is significant because of its influence on how people in western countries learn.
Why these three texts, beyond the coincidence of reading them more-or-less at the same time? Appleby, Hunt & Jacob (hereafter AH&J) investigate “what sorts of political circumstances foster critical inquiry” (p. 9). They write specifically in regard to the discipline of history by “examin[ing] critically the relevance of scientific models to the craft of history” (p. 9). I borrow their analysis as a way to explore the relevance of scientific models to other disciplines, particularly communication and the intersection of communication with political economy (especially governance), management (the organization of business), and culture (identity, ritual, and social relations).
AH&J challenge relativists and skeptics, sometimes lumping them together as postmodernists, arguing that in some ways they can “leav[e] the impression that the linguistic conventions of science have less to do with nature and more to do with the sociology of the scientists…in this way they have confused the social nature of all knowledge construction with the self-interest of the constructors, forgetting that all social beings participate in the search for knowledge and sometimes do so successfully” (emphasis added, p. 8-9). AH&J offer definitions for “skepticism” and “relativism,” showing how these attitudes form the substance of conflict with another historical attitude, that of religious absolutism. Tensions among these attitudes form the roots of the culture wars we see in the U.S. today.

“We view skepticism,” write AH&J, ” as an approach to learning as well as a philosophical stance…skepticism can encourage people to learn more and remain open to the possibility of their own errors” (p. 6-7).

Relativism, a modern corollary to skepticism, is the belief that truth is relative to the position of the person making the statement” (p. 7). There is an important nuance to this definition: truth is not directly relative to the person, rather, it is relative to “the position of the person.” (Note: “modern” means the idea of relativism wasn’t around when the initial fight took place between the skeptics and the religious. “Relativism” is an outgrowth of that fight.)

Religious absolutism is “the conviction that transcendent and absolute truth can be known” (p. 15).

All of these stances can be overdone, hence AH&J propose a standard for knowledge, i.e., for what we believe to be true:

The last phrase, it seems to me, is most crucial. If we are interested in democracy and social justice – meaning a fairness for groups of people of varying types – then we must find ways of producing and valuing broad social, political, and economic structures that are acceptable to everyone, even those whose self-interests differ from our own.
Jonathan Rosen, in a section about the ways Judaism and Christianity have borrowed from and influenced each other through the ages, writes about “open fearlessness, that willingness to assimilate outside cultures into your own without worrying that they will corrupt your beliefs” (p. 83-84). One of the anchors he poses for the Jewish religion is the collective realization, a very, very long time ago “that only words were durable” (p. 79). The Talmud, he argues, “is a sort of cathedral built across the ages and spanning all the earth – or perhaps I should say it’s a Temple, or at least a translation of one, built out of words and laws and stories” (p. 81).
I want to make three points simultaneously: language as a power with literal force; the “extraordinary religiosity” (according to AH&J, p. 50) of early (and at least some contemporary) scientists; and the inescapable fact that scientists today are the inheritors, intellectual descendants, and cultural products of the heroic science born of the Enlightenment. Certainly I am. I want to both rescue and continue the project of “truth with a purpose: the reform of existing institutions” (AH&J, p. 41), while seeking to escape or alter additional repeat performances of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth century culture wars.
Power of Interpretation:
Language is key. Rosen’s parallel between the Internet and the Talmud speaks to a proliferation of heterogeneous meanings that suggests an antidote to “the nature of books never to be quite right and of words always to elude our grasp” (p. 54). The refusal of words to mean one thing only, and to mean only that one thing always and forever, is precisely the juncture where understandings are forged or splattered. Words are durable while truth about what the words mean remains elusive. Rosen’s desire “to embrace contradictory traditions” (p. i) seems similar to AH&J’s focus on “the interplay between certainty and doubt” (p. 10). This enables Rosen to keep faith with “the business of life [which] is to learn, not to know” (p. 33). For AH&J that interplay “keeps faith with the expansive quality of democracy” (p. 10). Learning, democracy, science, and faith are inextricably intertwined: language is their confluent expression.
This is why Ilan Stavans can assert with conviction: “I find translators, in many ways, to be the real protagonists of culture . . . Translators are the underpaid heroes of culture.” Translators – and interpreters – are always in between. Rosen explains how the Talmud “devised a culture intended to be a kind of middle term between extremes – between destruction and new creation, between the dead and the living, between God and man, between home and exile, between doubt and faith, between outward behavior and inner inclination” (p. 131).
Interpretation is a form of communication that has to work within and between “the chaotic contemporary forms of communication that,” Rosen explains, “are so often accused of diverting us from what is true. The chaos and the incongruities, it turns out, are part of the truth” (p. 119). On that basis he compares the “interrupting, jumbled culture of the Internet” (p. 10) with “a page of the Talmud” (p. 19): “all those texts tucked intimately and intrusively onto the same page, like immigrant children sharing a single bed” (p. 10). “Those portions and their accompanying readings,” he continues, “swim in a sea of commentary . . . so large that it seems at times to expand [like the Internet] to include everything” (p. 30).
Language in History:
Before elaborating on Stavan’s thesis, let me summarize the discussion of language and its role in history provided by Appleby, Hunt & Jacob, because they present the discipline of linguistics in the creation of heroic science as an equal partner to the discipline of science. “The Enlightenment,” said to begin in 1690, “set the terms of the modern cultural project: the individual’s attempt to understand nature and humankind through scientific as well as linguistic means” (p. 39). Concurrent with the emergence of sciences and history as disciplines, “the European philosophes also developed new approaches toward old languages and texts. Reading old documents, indeed reading any document, is never as simple as it looks. Even picking up the local newspaper you ask, well, why did they run that story? Or, I wonder what party that journalist has joined?” (p. 37)
The discipline of linguistics began with criticism of written texts, called hermeneutics. It didn’t take long before “the language in a text, the words on the page, became too important to be left to clerical interpreters” (AB&J, p. 38). The Christian Bible was, at the time, the standard of absolute knowledge; it came under particular scrutiny. Ironically, clergy had originally invented hermeneutics, using the Bible as the reference point for all kinds of statements of absolute truth concerning the world and time. Now, AB&J continue, “The words had to be enlisted in the enterprise of creating wholly secular and scientific learning, but with consequences for … the present generation” (p. 38).
Stavans says, “Using language as a category is a way to say who we are in front of a mirror.” He goes on to illustrate how words change meanings over time, illustrating how the evolution of meaningfulness is what goes on socially, among and between people. When you, or I, use language – when we talk or write – we are “saying who we are” to ourselves.
When I wrote earlier that I am cut in the vein of heroic science, it is because I recognize how I think and talk in those terms. AH&J present a range of descriptions:

“Diderot described the follower of the Enlightenment as an eclectic, a skeptic and investigator who ‘trampling underfoot prejudice, tradition, venerability, universal assent, authority – in a word, everything that overawes the crowd – dares to think for himself, to ascend to the clearest general principles, to examine them, to discuss them, to admit nothing save on the testimony of his own reason and experience’” (citing Diderot’s article on eclecticsm in the Encyclopedie (1751), p. 39).

I am not an ideal type, but there is certainly a resemblance. How about this: “a new kind of person…hard to govern, suspicious of authority, more interested in personal authenticity and material progress than in the preservation of traditions, a reader of new literature, novels, newspapers, clandestine manuscripts, even pornography, all especially produced for an urban market” (p. 40). This description hardly marks me special, rather it describes today’s average western person. To wit, “a new cultural type who could be a pundit, prophet, fighter against tyranny and oppression, original thinker, elegant writer, sometimes pornographer, reader of science, host of salons, or occasional freemason” (p. 35).
The average western person today, as well as trained scientists and elites, however, is also subject to the culture wars that are the legacy of the original, historical figures of the Enlightenment who “battled with clergy and churches and at moments risked martyrdom” (p. 18). “In the culture wars of the present generation, language, with the many uses and abuses that can be attributed to it, has figured prominently in the arsenal of weapons” (p. 38). Today, continuing the trend of the Enlightenment when secular hermeneutics turned the scientific method on the Bible, all words are related to other words.

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There are concerns being raised about translating the research invitation to Members of the European Parliament (MEPs). My friends and colleagues composing the Translation Team (!) are encountering the challenges of linguistic rotation. I am borrowing the technical term, rotation, from matrix algebra. (Disclaimer: four decades later I begin to learn math!)
Which should I write first: the metaphor (a three–by-three matrix) or the data (the questions and concerns)? Let’s go with the data.
Immediately the question was raised, “Why translate at all?” Alongside the deep philosophical implications (which I need another few decades to work out) are practical concerns. Isn’t the effort to generate a “single” invitation in twenty-three languages rather absurd?

• unnecessary?
• the production of more work?
• impossible?
• just a nice gesture?

Possibly. Depending upon one’s logic, certainly so; given an alternative reference frame, however, perhaps the benefit, in the end, will be worth the trouble. Crafting the translations has, actually, been a bit of trouble - not just time and effort, but a source of some consternation. Three versions have been completed to date: Bulgarian, Romanian, and Polish. A few potential translators have dropped out because of the terminology: as much as I try to explain what I aim to do in plain language, a few conceptual/theoretical terms keep sneaking in: words that are obviously labels for something, a shorthand way of referring to a specific set of knowledge or kind of experience, a code that stands for or signals something more, something else, something beyond what a dictionary provides.
Part of my rationale, going in to this study of simultaneous interpretation in the European Parliament, is that this is always the case. One of the intriguing dynamics that I hope to explore is the way people generally know (in every day use) that words can mean different things at different times in different contexts. This inherent flexibility of language is what makes, for instance, a double entendre possible. There simply could not be two simultaneous meanings for a word or phrase without language having the capacity to mean more than one thing – even in one utterance at a specific time in a given context with particular participants under whatever situational and cultural rules apply.

Somehow, though, when the topic/process of interpretation comes up, this rich capability of language “to mean” many things seems to become a liability – even a problem. Whether or not we want to reduce language’s ability “to mean” in general, the discourse about meaning when a translation is involved (the things people say about it) shows an attitude that wants to impose some kind of confirmation or guarantee that only one meaning will be allowed. Even trickier, a moral element often comes into play: not just any (of the usual or probable) discrete/unique meanings, but The Right One.
The specific problem with my invitation letter is jargon. Maybe I am being too stubborn in wanting to provide MEPs with enough information to suffice as “informed consent,” but there are bureaucratic procedures and ethical dilemmas that must be addressed. I do not anticipate in any way that harm will come to someone by talking, confidentially, with me about their views about and experiences with simultaneous interpretation (SI). Really, what I want to learn is when, how, and why do people make the choice to go with an interpreter (and then how skillful are they in the use of this communication process), and when, how, and why do persons choose to use a lingua franca, trying to forego interpretation. The “people” and “persons” are, in this case, Members of the European Parliament. I am assuming that

a) the choice between SI and a lingua franca is a real option: i.e., interpreters are available and lingua francas are known, and
b) the choices made by MEPs are indeed representative of “people” in general, although in this case actually of Europeans in general, or – even more precisely, of the choices that would be made by the citizens of the MEPs respective countries if they were in similar circumstances.

The dilemma of the official invitation is that it serve to entice MEPs to want to talk with me! I do, quite sincerely, believe that there will be tangible benefit to those who agree to participate, at least in heightening their awareness of language choice and (ideally) the relationship between their language use and how influentially they help design policy. Meanwhile, the official invitation also must fulfill the ethical principles of informed consent. I want the MEPs to say, “yes,” and arrange an interview; I need them to have some basis of knowledge about where I’m coming from – even if it is only enough to ask a question! So, in the invitation, when “co-productively,” “voice,” and “action learning” are used by me, deliberately, in order to establish boundaries and set trajectories, I think it is totally permissable that a given language may or may not have a readily-equivalent way to handle the task I want these words to accomplish. My thinking is based on a logic of simultaneous interpretation as an ongoing, continuous, complex process of making meaning together (paraphrased from the textbook I am currently using to teach Interpersonal Communication).
This logic of simultaneous interpretation is different than the traditional logic of written translation. A written translator (especially a professionally trained one), seeks to establish a record for all time. The intent of the translation is not to participate in an immediate give-and-take, but rather to cement a particular viewpoint or story into a permanent fixed form. A simultaneous interpreter however (especially a professionally trained one), is seeking to adapt fluidly within a moving situation whose players are themselves in flux. A previously written text does not change, one can come back to the exact same words as often as one wants, from the gut instinct of first reading to the reflective analysis provided by situating a sentence (as the turning point in chapter three, for instance) in relation to the entire novel. A spontaneous interpretation works in concert with interlocutors to create endings that are not necessarily pre-determined, because they have literally not yet been said – the conversation is underway and can evolve.
So, this is a long explanation to get to the notion that those pesky technical terms could simply be left in English: to be explained later. Equally well the attempt can be given to render them as faithfully as possible in the logic, diction, and grammar of the target language. Either way the possibility of a conversation about what those terms mean is laid open. Without including them at all? I can assume, from the beginning, that the people I am going to meet and talk with will not understand – and use this as a reason to exclude these terms; alternatively, I can accept that they probably won’t understand the terms but are capable of doing so, with a bit of effort on both our parts.
It turns out that I am, indeed, stubborn for the latter.

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I will be interested to know how things unfold for Professor/Interpreter Eric Camayd-Freixas, “Immigrant of the Day“, for whistle-blowing on an oppressive criminal prosecution against agricultural migrant workers. My curiosity regards him as an individual, interpreting as a profession, and the complicated ways institutional meanings are made among persons interacting with each other through various languages.
“The questions they asked showed they did not understand what was going on,” Professor Camayd-Freixas said in an interview for the NYTimes. The video accompanying the printed text details some of the evidence by which the defendants (read, human beings) were denied voice.
The detailed disclosure by Professor Camayd-Freixis struck a chord with Helly, who describes “working within the Hong Kong legal system to achieve justice for domestic workers. Although there are legal processes in place that should protect migrants as well as citizens, in reality, the protection of the law is far weaker when applied to migrant populations.” This is also the case for the American Deaf Community (who are domestic citizens). Interviews (unpublished, 2005) with Turkish immigrants in Germany attest to a similar phenomenon, there. I am also reminded of the Ukrainian interpreter who broke role during a television newscast to inform the deaf public about a political coup.
“Interpreters, just like judges and attorneys, have an obligation to maintain the confidentiality of the process,” [Isabel Framer, a certified legal interpreter from Ohio who is chairwoman of the National Association of Judiciary Interpreters and Translators] said (NY Times article). “But they don’t check their ethical standards at the door.” Indeed, we do not, however, pressure to conform to the dictates of established professional conduct is both subtle and overt: interpreters (at their/our respective level of labor) are also subjected to institutional “injustices against those simply trying to work and survive.” Notice the language used to position Professor Camayd-Freixas’ actions: An interpreter crosses a line and sheds light, he takes “a brave stand” – positioned in the face of or against an incredible legal onslaught, he “has taken a risk.”

“Apprehending people who are in the country illegally is one thing but to corner these same people to force them into criminalizing themselves so that it can be publicized that these people are a threat to national security is beneath the integrity of this country.” Latina Lista

Voices from a Raid is a video featuring first-hand accounts (in Spanish, with English subtitling) from a different raid earlier this year. The video opens with an excerpt from a speech by Barack Obama about the necessity for all Americans to participate in creative solutions to the dilemma of illegal immigrants. “It’s a difficult task to be an Interpreter, to have to bite your tongue and not speak out, to attempt to right a wrong, especially when it involves the civil or human rights,” writes Tony Herrera, predicting that an argument will be developed that the proper, ethical choice would have been for Professor Camayd-Freixas to recuse himself. The first blogpost about this story is titled, Sign Here or Starve: The Truth About Postville, Iowa – a direct comment on the coercive tactic of gaining guilty pleas in this case, but also reminiscent of the professional line interpreters are demanded to tread: witness only, reveal naught! “What, asks Evelyn of the Hispanic Business Forum, and I agree we need to explore deeply, “is the purpose of laws?”

I am intrigued that the text of the NY Times story by Julia Preston has been posted to a Marxist listserv: “Translator: Guatemalan meat-packers were railroaded into prison.” Not only academics, also law professors are following the unfolding. This matter of making a decision on the basis of non/un-understanding is serious – especially at the level of law – whether one is creating policy or implementing it.

Another first-person account was posted at la vida:

• Immigration Raid – 390 People Detained in Postville, Iowa (May 17)
• Day One: The Day of the Raid (May 18)
• Day Two – At the National Cattle Congress (May 20)
• An overview of the rest… (June 20)

Several sources seem to be post the text of Professor Camayd-Freixis full account, without adding analysis or commentary, such as ALIPAC.net.

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There was The Biggest Salad Ever and a Bison Burger. Margaritas and Honey Pilsner.
Laughter looping across periodic boundary conditions. My blushing. (!) A handshake for the chinese zodiac. (Do you know what they say about Virgos?)



The Italian mafia. A Columbian cartel. Romanian espionage and disruption services. A South African escapee. Bhutanese royalty. Some Americans and a Turk.
Seriously, one language or many? Interpreted (essential heterogeneity) or lingua franca (reduced homogeneity)? Our debate draws forth a distinction: what do we value most and when – the depth and strength of relational connection or the collaborative effort to generate joint action toward a desired goal? I propose that

• we are always interpreting – the interactive presence of a simultaneous interpreter only makes the fact more evident, and
• more attention to this fact (of always and inevitable interpretation) could enable deepened collaborations to redress the critical needs of our time.

I am cautioned, again (and with great humor!), to be gentle with those who agree to talk with me: sensitivities about language skill can open vulnerabilities that could undermine the research endeavor. Refinements to the research problem have been percolating since the Committee exerted force on the prospectus. What matters – always – is the third, the locus of triangulation. There is the object of study – language use in an environment with an unprecedented range of language choice, and the emergent phenomena of an apparent preference for a (shared) lingua franca instead of a professionally-trained interpreter (to mediate linguistic difference). What, the committee asks, is the field of action within which language choice matters? What is the context that imbues significance to an individual’s decision to use their best language instead of a weaker one? (I will also have to take into account that small percentage who are truly balanced bilinguals.)
The site of the study is political, institutional, and driven by economics. The crux of action could be defined as leadership – not in the strict sense of hierarchical role, but in the generic sense of providing a necessary function in the crucial moment that brings a desired goal closer to fruition.
For the record: Zeynep, my Temporary Quasi Date, Sangria Girl, STFU, Roommate, Henk, Don, and Anuj. Earlier, assorted town officials, a bonedigger and the FBI (now required for a visa).

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As students take finals, a chance arises for more feedback about how the interpreting has worked this year. First, the old school: a moderator asks if I’ll be set up somewhere so the signing “won’t be a distraction to other students taking the test.” In fact, unusually (!), I’ve arranged a chair near the deaf student so that I’m right here for consultations – if any are needed – with the teaching staff. One teacher approaches me to let me know that some students in her class, a discussion section (not lecture) had told her in private that they really appreciated the presence of an interpreter. Watching me retrace what she’d just said, pointing out the specific parts on the board, was helpful in giving them a second chance to absorb the material. Not that they understood the sign language, but just signaling (by literally pointing out) the relevant part of an equation enabled them to gain a firmer grasp of the material.
Also, as we wait and the student distracts herself from the upcoming test, I gain some feedback from her perspective. How does she feel about my moving around? “I understand more because you are right next to the teacher.” I asked, what about when the teacher moves to one end of the board and I stay behind, because there’s something more to explain? “Sometimes I get lost…we fall behind.” Yeah, sometimes you’re taking notes and I have to remember a bunch of stuff, other times I understand the words but not the concept and have to wait until I understand the point of the words. Should I just give you the words? A shrug, “we can experiment.”
We agree that its neat the non-deaf students are using me, too. “Yeah, especially waiting to let you ask the questions so they don’t have to.” I know! The Slimeballs! I love the proof, though, that I am not just interpreting “for” the deaf student; what I’m doing benefits everyone (or at least most).
I’m a little shy to ask, but the students who participated in the official research last week made some comparisons between my interpreting and that of other interpreters they had seen. Someone had said watching me was like watching “a show.” Hmmm. I don’t think I’m giving a show, I think I’m performing the language. The deaf student agrees. She says the other interpreters “sit in one place and show no expression.” I know my colleagues are competent, and … this habit we’ve developed of fixing a position takes so much away from the communicative potential of a bilingual encounter! :-/ One of my favorite Wanda’s was telling me the other day that, “in the old days interpreters moved a lot” in the kinds of ways that I do now, but “somehow we got out of that.” Now that would be an interesting critical-cultural analysis: what conditions prompted ASL interpreters to dispense with motion? What education is necessary to bring the movement back?

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When one of my interpreting colleagues materialized out of the ether in the midst of a job yesterday, the fact of my nearly exclusively work in college classrooms was glaringly apparent. What, a team?! She was doing what “we” do, out in the field: logistics had transpired such that the four interpreters hired for a conference with four deaf participants had to split up. Normally, since the whole job was eight hours long, we would work in pairs, restricting the four deaf participants to negotiate and compromise with each other in order to chose workshops so that the interpreters could remain together. Being flexible, and hating the ways our provision of communication acess sometimes turns into a limit on intellectual/personal choice, when it turned out there were three events desired during one and the same timeslot, we split up accordingly. When my teammate’s session ended early, she did what community interpreters do – came to join me: offering relief and backup. Only I didn’t see her. According to Wanda (the assigned/anonymous name for all colleagues who get blogged), I looked directly at her at least once, and she managed to catch the attention of most workshop participants waving at me from various angles in the room, but not me! I was in full solo-workmode, focused on the language: verbal and non-verbal, emanating from and directed by the workshop presenter, tightly in tune with the participation she evoked from the audience while constantly monitoring the deaf participant’s feedback for indicators of reception and assertion.
Wanda literally burst into my field of vision as if Scotty had just transported her into the scene. Startling!
I do, by the way, sometimes work with a team in post secondary educational settings, but many of the classes are fifty minutes long and – generally, although this depends on each particular professor’s teaching style and the density of the subject matter – the pedagogical pacing of a lecture is do-able for that amount of time (at least after one has built up the mental endurance and the physical skill of keeping one’s body relaxed and in proper posture).
The attitude is what struck me though, a sort of come hell or high water I’m gonna let my team know I’m here!
The American Sign Language interpreting community is good like that, nearly every place I have worked. Of course there are always individual exceptions to the teamwork ethic, but – as a community of professionals – sign language interpreters have adopted some of the cultural norms of the Deaf community. These norms include the value of collectivity and (not always, but often) a sense of mission: to preserve and maintain Deaf Culture, educate non-deaf people about American Deaf Culture and American Sign Language, etc.
Returning to work in a familiar location with skilled colleagues was a joy. The day was gorgeous. The spring palette of freshly budding green intermixed with blue sky and smatterings of snow was brought into high relief by perfect temperatures, inside and out. Literally, in terms of the weather, and also figuratively: the work of this conference, with its incredible mix of participants and lofty goals, merged seamlessly with the calm, stable, and beautiful environment. Such privilege! Here was a community of people using a variety of communication technologies and two languages. I struggled with the computer-generated voices from some presenter’s communication boards, a matter of pace (recommendation: design pauses and slow down the rate of words/minute) but how cool is it to converse with someone whose mind is totally active even though their body doesn’t cooperate so readily? Of course, there is work on both sides – the user of facilitated communication (FC) has labored to pre-record messages (imagine the anticipation!), and the non-FC user has to slow down to order to establish relationship. Don’t think this is not laborious itself! Imagine the pace at which our society compels us to move? Hurry hurry do do don’t think too much be witty rush hurry twenty more things on the list time is running out!
Yet, in the rarified setting of a well-cared for state, with deeply institutionalized rights and support structures enabling the achievement of those rights, such creative engagement becomes possible. Relationships across incredible difference are built. This will seem like a tangent, but imagine if such privilege was the norm? There might be a Day of No News, also rendered like this: No News.
We are quite a long way off from the dilemmas such stability and prosperity might cause (methinks we’d invent plenty of new, exciting forms of news), but – in order to have a chance of getting there – the need for strategically building the capacity of resources to sustain such relationships is key. Cheryl Moose wrote about this in her recent President’s Report (VIEWS, May 2008). I’d like to propose that in addition to firming up the bedrock partnership between Deaf communities and sign language interpreters, we also need to think even more broadly to alliances with spoken language interpreters. As globalization forces more and more different kinds of people into “relationships” premised upon the need to work – remaining fragmented as (for instance) community or conference interpreters, signed or spoken language interpreters could leave the profession of simultaneous interpretation scrambling. (Whether or not this bodes well or ill for the users of our services is another story! We are, according to many logics, a luxury.)

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Work on optical illusions show how the distance from which one views a face alters the expression you think you’re seeing. Some constructions are creepy!
I’m intrigued with the function of distance. Part of what me and my committee need to sketch out is the scope of the lens I’ll use in exploring the practice of simultaneous interpretation at the European Parliament. Since each of our relative distances from the object of study differ, establishing a reasonable range might be a challenge.

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I’ve been interpreting this semester for eleven weeks. Undergraduate classes meet either two or three times a week, so Friday would have been roughly class session #30 (with some cancellations/holidays factored in). That is some 25 hours of interpreted interaction (50 minutes each session). About two weeks ago the instructor of one course started actually prepping me during the few minutes between my arrival and the start of class. This could be structural, meaning that the first activity in class now requires students to solve a problem based on formulas learned the previous session, giving us this “window” in which to converse. However I think there’s also been a different kind of noticing….as if – finally?! – all that moving around as I track writing on the chalkboard across its fifty-foot expanse suggests that I am doing something.
Well, of course it’s obvious that I’ve been doing something, but what, exactly? As the semester progresses the material becomes more challenging and complicated. This has meant I need to be closer to the instructor as she writes on the board, thus (I hypothesize) more visible: in her field of peripheral vision at least, if not actually an object of the direct gaze. Indeed, we have made eye contact more frequently – again, either as a result of me being closer to the teacher’s visual space or because I’ve had to ask more often for clarification or repetition. There was one day last week when I had to say, “I’m sorry, did you say..” or “I’m sorry, did you mean…?” three or four times in the span of a few minutes.
My getting lost so often may have prompted the teacher to be more assertive in preparing me for ‘what’s to come,’ in the day’s particular lesson. (She even pre-warned me about a particularly tough section coming up in a few weeks so I have plenty of time prepare!) What happened on Friday, though, really caught my attention. During the check-in, in which I was informed we were only covering two new formulations but they are both rather complicated, I said I might have to interrupt more often because of the complexity. Actually, I explained,

The deaf student looks down to write notes while you continue lecturing. I have to retain the explanation in mind while the student writes, meanwhile you continue with the explanation and there is only so much I can recreate when the student looks up and I try to catch her up from where she looked down all the way to where you are now.

“Interesting,” she said quietly, as if for the first time the fact of what I need to coordinate in this tripartite interaction of time, mode, and meaning became apparent.
And I too thought, “interesting” that this is the time frame in which the natural development of trust between us (the teacher and me) has enabled a conversation that might actually enhance the bilingual communication dynamics in the class. I note this because, as usual, on the first day of class I spoke with the teacher about some of the issues that might come up during interpretation, such as asking her to slow down or repeat material. Her reaction – a very common one – was a bit startled (?), even taken aback. I hesitate to ascribe too explicitly what she actually felt in that moment, but it seems to me many, many people (especially teachers) are not exactly thrilled with having to make an accommodation with their teaching style. The rarity of someone who embraces the challenge is striking by contrast to this usually mild mode of resistance.
What excites me about this teacher and this situation now is by comparison with another class, in which the teacher still refuses to acknowledge my existence. The set-up there is a bit different, I am next to the projection screen, some 15-20 feet away from the teacher as she speaks. Occasionally our paths cross when she wanders away from the lectern to expand on a concept that requires no writing, but usually she is writing on her notepad laptop which is projected onto the screen in real time. In other words, it is almost like a teacher writing on a chalkboard, but instead of the horizontal motion across the board, erasing, and returning to write again, the projection screen is vertical, top-down in the manner which the students themselves are taking notes. The result of this different arrangement is that my position is more static. I need to be where the writing is, and this keeps me distant from the teacher.
I would say this doesn’t necessarily create an obstacle, however in this instance the environment is actually hostile. When the teacher walks over to highlight something on the screen, she studiously avoids looking at me. I’m not talking shying away from eye contact, I mean acting as if I am not even there. Possibly (I speculate) if she was using the board in the traditional way (left-to-right across the front wall of the classroom), we would necessarily “encounter” each other more and some interaction would have to occur. I suppose she could ignore just as vigorously, but at some point wouldn’t that become an obvious problem? This is what I think occurred in the other class; by seeing me struggle – hesitate, pause, scan the board furiously for the referent – the teacher witnessed the labor of what I’m doing (and eventually decided to do something about it).
In the hostile situation, the teacher is (apparently) invested in not “doing something” and – because I am structurally “out-of-the-way”, even the chance for dynamic growth into an awareness that doing something might be worthwhile (or helpful, or polite, or whatever you want to call it) to enhance the communication process (i.e., learning opportunity!) for the deaf student is foreclosed. My being situated away from the action, away from the teacher, prevents the development of bilingual norms that are inclusive. (Instead, what is modeled is an exclusive norm which presumes nothing needs to change – an homogeneity of learning is assumed and imposed irregardless of equitability, efficiency, or even some kind of basic cross-cultural consideration.)

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Weird how certain things come up in bursts, isn’t it? In the past month I’ve encountered three situations involving some combination of Deaf people, American Sign Language, and Koko, the “signing” gorilla.
To be fair, as I consider this, I would probably have to converse with Koko myself to know whether I thought there was actual language happening – you know, the kind of communication that we consider the particularly special feature of language. My understanding is that Koko knows some “signs,” responding “appropriately” to some of them and and generating some “signs” herself (is Koko a she?) Please don’t misunderstand me, I think it is awesome that there is such strong evidence of high-order cognition from other animals besides ourselves, and I want gorillas to persist on the planet. In fact, I would be stunned and amazed and thrilled, actually, if humans could develop languages or other means of communication that enabled us to learn from the other animals what they know about living on earth. Maybe signed language is one of those modes – just like human babies can learn to project meaning with signs sooner than they can project meaning with spoken words (all those pesky muscles in the tongue and mouth!) – it is not surprising that gesture is a powerful tool across species (as well as between different language groups among our own).
Equating what Koko does with what culturally Deaf people do with their linguistically-complex signed languages (yes, plural!), while cool for the great ape can also serve people inclined to stereotype. Old prejudices persist, with sometimes appalling consequences. I’m not just referring to a deaf person’s hurt feelings because a non-deaf person is unable to understand that the mind works just as well with signed languages as it does with spoken ones. I am referring to the casual attitudes one develops towards those considered somehow inferior or otherwise less-worthy. I am referring to a cavalier attitude toward Deaf people’s concerns with medical genocide, so easy to pass off if one assumes a Deaf human being is more like a gorilla than like me.
Another irony involves this popularity of non-deaf parents teaching their non-deaf babies to sign. What a fad this is! Parents value those five or six word vocabularies so much! And then drop them (?) as soon as baby starts to speak. I’m not saying parents should not take advantage of the temporary relief signed language provides, but – this is a bit of cultural appropriation, isn’t it? Where’s the give-back? I have friends who are doing this and I am happy to provide a few ’survival signs,’ and – I hope they’ll remember, someday, to support legislation recognizing signed languages and residential schools for the Deaf, reject moves to medicalize deafness through research and (what some people consider) experimental surgery on children, to reject eugenics, be willing to pay for signed language interpretation to create accessibility, and even be bold enough to talk with and to Deaf people in meetings or classrooms or anyplace where an interpreter is available for that very purpose (instead of talking to the interpreter as a proxy!)
I know. People don’t consider these things, and why should they, really, if it hasn’t come up? We’ve all got plenty to do. Most of us say we’ve got too much to do, rushing on and on, in a hurry to get things done so we can immediately start the next task. Get those kids signing so we can move on to other things!
All I’m saying is, let your mind be joggled!

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