Interpreting at TISLR 8, Barcelona 2004

[Josep Quer]

Dear Listers,

We are in the process of deciding the provisory budget for TISLR, so
that we can start applying for funding. Obviously, SL interpreting will
constitute one of the biggest costs for the organization.

We take it for granted that the demands about SL interpreting that were
expressed in the Amsterdam Manifesto
(http://www.ea.nl/EUDmail/amsterdam_manifesto.htm) should be adopted as
guidelines for interpretation at the conference. So, in accordance with
the spirit of the Manifesto, the official languages should be English,
ASL, BSL, LSC (Catalan Sign Language) and LSE (Spanish Sign Language).
As you can imagine, having intrepretation in 4 signed languages during a
3-day event is not a trivial matter and it might become a stumbling
block from a financial point of view.

One of the decisions we should take in order to make it feasible is give
up the idea of having several parallel sessions. This does not exclude
the possibility of organizing a couple of them, but not for the whole
conference programme.

An important question I would like to ask you is the following: to what
extent is it possible for Deaf researchers from the US, ASL-signing
Canada, Britain and Australia to bring interpreters funded by
organizations in their respective countries? It goes without saying that
participants should know enough in advance whether they are accepted or
not. That’s why we would tentatively suggest to send notification of
acceptance by the end of May 2004. Would that be enough for people to
apply to those institutions that could provide them with interpreters?

Next to this, there is the question about the SLs used by smaller Deaf
communities. Here it might get worse, especially in countries where no
such funding possibilities exist. In that case, and depending on the
final resources we get, we could think of subdidizing (part of) the
interpreter costs.

We really need your feedback on these issues, as we cannot proceed if we
don’t get a clear picture of what the real costs can be.

Suggestions/comments/criticism welcome! Also from people who are not on
the list, so please ask your colleagues as well.

Thanks in advance,

Josep Quer
On behalf of the TISLR organizing committee