Interpreting at TISLR 8, Barcelona 2004

[BGG]

Hello all,
After a hiatus of several years I am back on the SLLING
list and very much appreciate the discussion on
interpreting issues at TISLR 8.
I would like to reiterate Ulrike Zeshan's concerns.
While his experience has been primarily in Asia, I have
made similar observations in Latin America. While I
have sadly seen numerous conferences that excluded Deaf
';voices', I  do have a contrasting example to offer.
Last summer  for Deaf Way II, two Brazilian deaf
doctoral students came with a hearing colleague to
present their work as part of the scientific program
(we had all worked to gether in Brazil in 1999 during
my sabbatical).   The deaf presenters had planned to
present in International Sign. By sheer luck, they met
an American interpreter who lives in Rio, fluent in
LIBRAS, Brazilian Sign Language, who volunteered to
interpret from LIBRAS to spoken English for their
symposium.   The quality of the session was tremendous
-and the depth of their work was communicated.  The
feedback from the large audience   was overwhelmingly
positive and their contribution to the scientific
program substantial.  This was possible through luck
and the generousity of a multilingual interpreter.  I
also agree with Paddy Ladd's point - how can we work
with communities of Deaf people (and I would say any
community) without being able to talk about that work
in their language.

Barbara Gerner de Garcia


On Thu, 17 Apr 2003 10:32:39 +1000, Ulrike Zeshan wrote:

>
> Dear all,
>
> I would like to pick up on another point that Paddy
> raised only briefly,
> that is, the ASL vs BSL vs other sign languages issue:
>
> >For myself - although from UK - I dont have especial
> demands for BSL
> >to be an official language of the conference,
although
> I agree these
> >[ie asl vs bsl vs etc etc] are all still very tricky
> issues to decide
> >upon - because once we do so we will make a decision
> that will affect
> >the entire deaf world for ever, and from which there
> will be no going
> >back. If we are concerned abt USA colonialism, and
> consequent damage to
> >other sign languages, then we know that this decision
> is a tough one.
> >This issue is not my main focus here therefore.
>
> As some of you may be aware, I mostly work with deaf
> communities in
> developing countries, so this question is very much on
> my mind. One problem
> I had with the Amsterdam document when I first saw it
> was the effect it
> would have for deaf people in developing countries who
> will be more and
> more likely to be able to participate in these
> conferences in the future.
> And from our point of view, if you don't mind, the
> Amsterdam proposal
> effectively means that those deaf people who are
> already most able to pay
> for interpreting get the free service while those who
> are least able to pay
> get nothing (I am leaving aside, for the moment, the
> valid issue of shared
> responsibilities for interpreting). Deaf people from
> the developing
> countries where I have worked, and, if I am not
> mistaken, from many other
> countries, do NOT understand ASL or BSL, or even
> International Sign, for
> that matter. So what to do? I don't have a ready
answer
> and I agree fully
> with Paddy that it is a 'tricky issue' and a 'tough
> decision'. But I would
> be happy it if the needs of deaf people from
developing
> countries could be
> considered in any solution that we will come up with
in
> the end. I
> appreciate the current organizers' approach to discuss
> these things very
> early in the planning stage, I think it is the right
> thing to do! Good on
> ya, as we say in Australia ;)
>
> Ulrike
>
>
> ---------------------------------------
> Dr. Ulrike Zeshan
> Research Centre for Linguistic Typology
> Institute for Advanced Study
> La Trobe University
> Victoria 3086, Australia
> ph. +61-3-94796420
> fax +61-3-94673053
> u.zeshan at latrobe.edu.au
> ---------------------------------------


Barbara Gerner de Garc Mß
Associate Professor
Department of Educational Foundations and Research
Gallaudet University
800 Florida Ave NE
Washington DC 20002-3695