Interpreting at TISLR 8, Barcelona 2004

[Gaurav Mathur]

Hi everyone,

I would like to share some things in the hope of providing some
insight into the rationale behind the Amsterdam Manifesto, since it
may not be as obvious to other participants who were able to speak
and hear English (more or less) and did not have to face the
situation that many of us found ourselves in.

As I understand it, the main idea of the Amsterdam Manifesto is this:
accessibility at TISLR conferences should be ensured by having some
group (e.g. the local organizing committee) make sure that there are
interpreter services in a certain number of non-local majority signed
languages, depending on financial constraints. Let me illustrate the
rationale behind this with two issues that came up.

1. The first issue is that there was *no* guarantee that interpreters
for a non-local majority sign language would be available. Here, I'll
provide two examples.

a) Before the Amsterdam conference, a diverse group of us in the US
and Canada emailed each other for many weeks, trying to figure out
who would bring which ASL interpreter(s). Initially, we came up with
a plan, but this plan fell apart when some of us withdrew our
participation.

We almost gave up all efforts to attend the conference. However, in
the *last* week before the conference started, a solution emerged:
one ASL interpreter came on my behalf, while one came on behalf of
another Deaf participant. A third one showed up later as a volunteer
ASL interpreter, much to our pleasant surprise.

This should not happen again in the future, since it was not easy to
pull it off. I was a student at the time and universities in the US
generally pay for interpreters only for activities taking place on
campus. Other Deaf students requested their universities for
financial support, but their requests were denied. At that time, I
was also working on a professor's grant, so in the end, after much
negotiating, my university and my professor agreed to split the cost
of one interpreter even though they were not obliged to do so.

b) There were Deaf participants from Sweden who were also planning to
bring Swedish Sign Language interpreters. Their system is different
than the American system, in that they are alloted a certain amount
of funding for interpreters in a given year, and I understand it does
not matter where one can use these interpreters. Unfortunately, they
did not expect that there would be no funding left to bring their
interpreters to the TISLR conference. They decided to come anyway in
the hope that ASL interpreters would be there, and that they could
follow them. However, we've just seen above that there was NO
guarantee of ASL interpreters either.

2. The second issue is if someone brings interpreters for a non-local
majority sign language, who gets to use them? I'll illustrate with
three examples of what happened at the conference.

a) There were concurrent sessions, and we had a limited number of
interpreters so that not all of them were accessible. During the
conference, the other Deaf person who brought an ASL interpreter and
I were often asked by other Deaf participants: "Will you attend that
talk?" When we said "No, we are going to the other session," we
invariably felt bad when they said "Too bad, I wish I could attend
that talk."

b)  There was also a lack of coordination, so that some interpreters
were not even available for those parts of the conference that had
just one session.  One time, shortly before my own talk, I was
practicing with my interpreter. There was another talk going on, but
there was no ASL interpreter for that talk. They tried to look for
one, even screaming "Where's the ASL interpreter?!"

c) There were some people who made the assumption that interpreter
services would be provided in a non-local majority sign language. For
example, there was one Deaf interpreter whose job was to translate
from ASL to another signed language for a Deaf participant. That Deaf
interpreter depended on the ASL interpreter for his job, and when
there was none available, he was stuck, leaving both him and his
client out.

This was not just an isolated case. Many other Deaf people came to
Amsterdam from diverse countries like Sweden, Italy, Spain, Denmark,
France and New Zealand that did not have interpreters from their
countries, and the two of us who brought ASL interpreters felt
responsible when we distinctly felt the general expectation that
there would always be ASL interpreters available.

Conclusion:

The "Amsterdam Manifesto" only asks that some group of people, e.g.
the local organizing committee, help *coordinate* and *ensure* that
there are sufficient numbers of interpreters in a sufficient number of
languages at the conference. This does NOT mean that they are solely
responsible for paying for the interpreters themselves. While it is
possible to cover part of interpreter expenses through conference
fees, (hearing) linguists, at least in the US, can, for example, ask
for supplements to their grants that cover interpreting expenses for
Deaf people who will be coming to the conference. Also, some
universities and institutes have staff interpreters and might be able
to send them to the conference.

I concede that Deaf participants from some countries are not able to
benefit from interpreters in non-local majority sign languages. At
the same time, it does not mean that we stop providing interpreters
in non-local majority sign languages. The Manifesto suggests that
only as the bare "minimum" for international sign linguistics
conferences. Interpreters are just one way to ensure accessibility;
hearing participants can also sign their papers if they can, as Paddy
Ladd has suggested.

To this end, I am glad to see that Josep and the rest of the
committee are considering those issues.

Gaurav