The Interpreter’s Task (Not)
Above is a screenshot of a workshop offered for 0.2 Continuing Education Units (CEUs), charging $30 for a 2-hour session.
This screenshot is circulating on social media with quite a bit of consternation in response. For those who don’t understand this reaction or wonder about the legitimacy of calling out the person offering this workshop, I have a few points to make below.
It is not the interpreter’s task to keep the deaf person’s attention.
Whose job is it to maintain the audience’s attention? The speaker’s*. It is the speaker’s responsibility to communicate their subject with enthusiasm in such a way that maintains the audience’s interest.
What is the interpreter’s task here? To effectively convey the speaker’s knowledge, expertise, and enthusiasm (or lack thereof) about the subject matter.
Why is this important to highlight? Because we need clearly defined roles for the interpreter and for all people involved in the communicative interaction.
It is not the interpreter’s task to entertain.
What is their job? To facilitate communication.
This is important because the goal is to facilitate access while honoring the agency* of all speakers involved. Treating interpreting as entertainment interferes with access in multiple ways. Interpreters are not professional entertainers although some may interpret in entertainment contexts, e.g. interpreting performances, concerts, spoken word poetry readings, inter alia.
It is not the interpreter’s task to compensate for the speaker’s shortcomings.
If the speaker mentions a celebrity, it is the speaker’s responsibility to provide contextual information and clarify their relevance if necessary. It is the speaker’s responsibility to maintain the audience’s attention. It is the speaker’s responsibility to self-edit if they’re sharing too much detail or not enough detail. In other words, the details and what’s important are up to the speaker, not the interpreter.
This is an important boundary to maintain.
This assumes, of course, an unidirectional lecture or presentation. In other communicative exchanges, the listeners have their responsibilities in asking for clarification, maintaining interest in the conversation, changing the topic, or ending the conversation if they are no longer interested.
It is not the interpreter’s task to keep a deaf person on task.
What is this about “keeping a deaf person on task”? This is a paternalistic, ableist, and audist take. We have agency. That extends to choosing to not pay attention to a boring speaker, which includes accepting the consequences of not paying attention, e.g. in academic settings. Yes, even young deaf children.
Children, like adults, have the right to bodily autonomy and agency, including where we direct our attention and what tasks we engage in. In classroom settings, we’ve had significant issues with the blurring of roles among the classroom aides, teaching staff, and interpreters. Again, boundaries matter.
It is definitely not the interpreter’s task to interfere with a deaf person’s agency.
Overall, the biggest issue with the framing of this workshop is that deaf people do not have agency. To interrupt to ask for clarification. To manage the flow of conversation. To direct their gaze and attention. To accept the consequences of not paying attention even when uninterested. To decide whether or not we want to be knowledgeable about celebrities and if so, which ones.
A major point of contention in the power dynamic between interpreters and deaf people is agency (on all sides). Deaf people have agency. So do interpreters. The question here is navigating that with respect to everyone involved.
What is the interpreter’s responsibility? To develop a strong foundation of extralinguistic knowledge to work with. Keep informed by following the news across a broad spectrum, read widely, listen to broadcast radio and well-curated podcasts, and being in community with deaf, deafdisabled, and deafblind people. So, when the speaker starts talking about a celebrity, the interpreter has some context to work with.
- *Speaker refers to interlocutors in an communicative exchange regardless of language and modality.
- *Agency means having control of your life, influence over your circumstances, and the trust in your capacity to think, behave, act, and make decisions on your own behalf.
- *I’ve obscured the name because the goal here isn’t to attack the person but to critique the issues within the workshop abstract itself.
