Sign-To-Text Interpreting (Was Interpreters as Typists)

[Barbara O'Dea]

Several years ago I taught a Linguistics of ASL course that had two Deaf
students (and 22 hearing students). Both of the Deaf students used ASL as
their primary language. I wondered if they could provide a term assignment,
in ASL, that would be of the caliber I expected from students writing their
term papers in English.

Those two students and I developed guidelines for the presentation of their
'term papers' in ASL (e.g. how to present references for the assignment, how
to present in text citations, etc.). The expectation was that they would
organized and present the assignment in as formal/academic a way as they
could.

I was uncertain about how this would turn out.

I was more than pleased to receive two presentations in an ASL style I am
rarely privy to - i.e. a very formal style/genre of ASL. These presentations
were clearly not in the style of written English or spoken English.

These students had done presentations in lots of classes before (with an
interpreter) where the hearing students made (oral) presentations. They were
excited, though, to do this project in ASL. In all of their years of
education, from elementary school to their university studies, they had
never had the opportunity to use ASL for an academic assignment. Instead of
merely 'hearing' from me, and other course materials, that ASL is equal to
other languages, all of my students experienced ASL being 'treated' as equal
to other languages. That was a bonus for sure.

There is no doubt that an ASL version may need more effort than I usually
give a student paper written in English, my native language. Nevertheless,
if I were to do this more often, maybe I would be more creative in both
generating guidelines for and assessing the quality of academic work in ASL.
Still, I submit that, in classes where the language I am teaching about is
the language of one or more of my students, maybe their use of that language
for class assignments is a fitting consideration - regardless of what
language it is.

odeeodee
 

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