■Sign language interpretation on the phone is not easy…

I had a phone call from a Deaf friend of mine after a long while. As cell phones become popular, I seldom receive phone calls from Deaf people. However, she decided to call me because it was rather urgent.

Deaf people can talk on the phone with the help of sign language interpreters. This time, the interpreter seemed to have had little experience serving as a sign language interpreter through the phone, because she said her own name, Ms. X, not the Deaf speaker's name. Fortunately, I was informed by the Deaf speaker by email about the phone call. So, I said, "This is Kimura speaking. Ms. X is calling me?", with the intention of making her aware of her role as interpreter. But, her answer was "Yes." After being asked the same question repeatedly, she finally realized, and told me the Deaf speaker's name.

When making a phone call, I ask one of the trainees at my school to help me as a sign language interpreter. Sign interpretation on the phone is really difficult for trainees, demanding high level of skills and experience.

When the subject is related to credit cards or cash cards, one is often asked to identify oneself as the card holder. When I call them for the first time, I always tell them that I am Deaf and use a sign language interpreter. Most credit card companies and banks are apt to ask the interpreter's name and inexperienced trainees make a mistake of telling them their own names, without telling me that they are being asked for their own names as well. As a result, even when I am in front of the phone, I sometimes miss a call from one of those companies because they refer to the interpreter's name, instead of mine.

After numerous experiences such as these, I keep in mind the following points.

・ Before calling, I explain to the interpreter what the purpose of my phone conversation is.

・ When I call a person for the first time, I reveal the fact that I am using an interpreter only when it is considered mutually beneficial.

・ Then I make it clear that I am the person calling, and do not mention the name of the interpreter (or do not let the interpreter mention her own name).

・ When the trainee's skill doesn't reach the simultaneous translation level, I tell the trainee in advance what the main purpose of my phone call is. Then, the interpreter makes the phone call in accordance with my advance instruction by way of consecutive interpretation. With complicated matters, I use a person who can do simultaneous interpretation.

・ When I call a person who knows I am Deaf, I let inexperienced trainees have a chance to improve their skills by attempting the phone-translation.

Since you can’t see the face of the person you are speaking to, some trainees don't like translating on the phone. But if you want to become a sign language interpreter, there is no way around it. They just have to overcome their uneasiness with telephone interpretation in order to be able to interpret smoothly.

On the other hand, Deaf people should familiarize themselves with the phone-conversation culture to be able to use it fully and effectively. To know how to use the phone well is also to know how to handle sign-language interpreters well.

Inexperienced trainees do not wish to hear (see) my request for phone-translation, but I keep on asking in sign language, "Give me your hands. I need to make a phone call."

* Translated from the e-magazine of January 12, 2006 (# 069)

■Misinterpreted CODA interpreters ? (2)

When I deliver out-of-town lectures, I make it a rule to take my own interpreters with me. Although saying “my own” may be misleading, I accept invitations to give lectures only on the condition that I am permitted to bring interpreters with me, because I absolutely need to have interpreters who can correctly interpret what I say.

This is because I had a bitter experience once. I obviously cannot hear the voice of the interpreters when they interpret my JSL into Japanese. Therefore, I don’t know how my lecture is being interpreted into Japanese while it is actually done. But one day, I realized my lecture was being interpreted appallingly.

After one of those out-of-town lectures, I was told that they wished to publish my lecture in written Japanese in their compiled report. They said they would like to print my lecture by transcribing the recorded tape of vocalized interpretation conducted by their local interpreters.

I felt slightly uneasy so I asked them to show me the transcription when it was finished. Several weeks later, the transcription was sent to me, but it was grossly misinterpreted from the first page. So I had no choice but to ask them to send the videotape of my lecture, which I myself had to transcribe into the correct Japanese.

I can swallow it when the interpreted Japanese is not beautiful, but it often is the case that my JSL is misinterpreted, sometimes conveying quite the opposite meaning of what I actually said or is not cohesive at all. I was quite upset when I realized that hearing people who cannot understand sign language very well listened to the interpreters’ Japanese, which was poor, fragmented and full of mistakes. After that, I decided to take my own interpreters with me to out-of-town lectures.

I also became very sensitive about the interpretation from Japanese Sign Language (JSL) to Japanese. We would have huge problems if Deaf people’s remarks were conveyed incorrectly by interpreters. (What if the Deaf person’s personality was misrepresented by the interpreters? That would be intolerable.)

In another situation, I had an opportunity to see transcriptions from simultaneous interpretation done by CODA (Children of Deaf Adults). In spite of being in the very pressured circumstances of simultaneous interpretation, I was astonished at the austere and sophisticated Japanese.

The following sentences are examples. ‘A’ is a poor example of being repetitive or clumsy though the interpreter correctly understood the message of sign language. ‘B’ is an example of CODA interpretation.

Example1
A: When a serving lady brought breakfast, she saw a man sleeping (in the corridor) without knowing anything and woke him up. He awoke and was surprised.
B: He was woken up by a serving lady preparing breakfast, and was surprised.

Example 1 is a sentence which includes so-called ‘Action Roll Shift’ frequently used in JSL. By choosing to use the passive voice as in B’s “be woken up”, the same information in sign language is condensed in translated short sentence.

Example2
A: ‘What a hassle! What shall we do?’ I discussed with my husband, and we decided to go and buy some paint at our local shop.
B: Then my husband and I decided to buy some paint at our local shop.

In JSL, verbs related to ‘motion’ such as /meet/, /go/, /move house/ and /walk/ are key words. /Discuss/, /hear/, /see/, and /turn on (a switch)/ also play important roles in JSL. However, inserting those verbs make Japanese sentences redundant.

In example 2, the verbs, /discuss/ and /go/ appear in JSL, while these verbs are not used in the interpretation in B done by CODA. The part of conversation quoted by roll shift ‘What a hassle! What shall we do?’ is translated to ‘then’, which makes a simple Japanese sentence.

However, when I showed the original signs (on video) and its transcription to a Deaf instructor training sign language interpreters in a local community, the instructor said the CODA completely failed to interpret it.

In the eye of the Deaf instructor, in sentence B of Example 1, the description of the man’s appearance, (“a serving lady saw him sleeping, and the way he slept without noticing anything”) is lacking. In sentence B of Example 2, the quoted conversation “What a hassle! What shall we do?”, “I discussed with husband.” and “go” are missing.

It is quite difficult to persuade the Deaf to understand that these kinds of expressions in JSL are equal to the interpretations in B in meaning and carry the same message. I think the reason for the difficulty is that Japanese is akin to a foreign language for the Deaf and we don’t understand the linguistic structure of Japanese well.

What’s more, even sign language interpreters whose mother language is Japanese say CODA interpretations like B are too condensed, omit JSL words, and are short of concrete description.

In addition, regarding interpretation from Japanese to JSL, CODA interpreters are even said to “express what is not delivered” or “interpret at their own discretion.”

As shown above, the evaluation for CODA interpretation is generally low.

As I mentioned in the 62nd e-mag, in the world of sign language interpretation, Manually Coded Japanese (MCJ) and intermediate sign language (what it really is, I am not sure) are in the mainstream, and CODA interpretation abilities are not evaluated properly yet. (Some CODAs have the same problems as English-Japanese interpreters who are returnees from English speaking countries. The fact that those problems aren’t explicitly recognized could also be a problem.)

While we are on the subject, there are a number of myths about sign language: that JSL has no conjunctive, no particles to distinguish subject and object, auxiliary verbs; passive voice, causative form; that JSL has to be expressed along a time axis; that JSL cannot express delicate nuances, and so on. This is really not the case.

Even I thought JSL was “an incomplete language” when I was in my early twenties. There may be many CODAs who think that way now.

In northern Europe, there are education programmes for Deaf parents concerning their hearing children (CODA). It is said that CODA who have no negative view of their Deaf parents will come to like the sign language used by their parents, and be more inclined to have jobs related to interpretation.

Perhaps we are behind in achieving the recognition of JSL and must do something to speed up the process. But in reality, those kind of educational activities have not been in place, which means it may be a long time before CODA interpretation receives the appreciation it so richly deserves.

*Translated from the e-magazine of October 16, 2005 (# 063)

■ “Misinterpreted CODA interpreters? (1)”

“CODA” is the abbreviation for Children of Deaf Adults. CODA are generally defined as “hearing people who are born to and brought up by Deaf parent/parents”, though it includes, in a broad sense, someone like me: a Deaf child born to a Deaf family.

The situation of CODA is similar to that of so-called “returnee children” in Japan. Most of those returnee children are bilingual. For example, Japanese returnee children from the U.S. are bilingual in both Japanese and English. (Generalization is dangerous, however, because the simple term “bilingual” involves various kinds of bilingual people, such as one who speaks both of the languages well, one who speaks one language better than another, and so on.)

The linguistic ability of returnees from the U.S. is said to be quite different from those who learn English in Japan, in both listening comprehension and speaking, particularly in pronunciation. For native speakers of English (say, for Americans), it may be easier to hear English spoken by the returnee children than that spoken by Japanese people who learn English in Japan (Japanese English). The same applies to Japanese Sign Language (JSL) used by CODA, which is natural and has few mistakes phonetically, grammatically, and in the use of vocabulary, so that the Deaf people whose mother language is JSL can enjoy conversations with CODA without any stress.

But when it comes to interpreting, the situation is a little different. Not all returnee children necessarily make good interpreters. We tend to expect returnee children to be excellent interpreters, simply because they are bilingual.

A fine interpreter not only understands the structure of the utterance but also the intention of the message in context, and transfers it instantaneously to the target language. (A poor interpreter sticks to the surface structure of the source and target languages and misses the point.)

I have heard that the interpretation by returnee children without proper training can be disastrous. From what I hear, there are cases that in spite of being fully bilingual in Japanese-English, a returnee, for example, could not satisfactorily fulfill the role of interpreter at a seminar on investment because the person lacked the expert knowledge on business management and economy and did not prepare what was necessary, including looking through the materials of the seminar prior to the job, and so on.

There are interpreters who are not returnees, who continue to make daily efforts to speak and listen to English, using native speakers as a model, because of their handicap of not having English as their native tongue. So, when they are going to interpret in subject areas unfamiliar to them, they usually prepare for the occasion by studying with technical books and checking the English terms in advance. The interpreters who make, so to speak, the “professional effort” which is necessary as interpreters, can fully perform their duty, though their pronunciation and accent of English may not equal those of native speakers.

Of course, some returnees receive proper training and make the “professional effort” required as interpreters. They have advantages over those whose mother tongue is not English because they can use English as their mother tongue and can also interpret well, being sensitive and alert to cultural differences.

As for CODA, naturally, there are some excellent CODA making professional efforts and working actively as interpreters. However, on the whole, they are still few in number.

The reason for this is, unlike in the English interpretation case mentioned above, in the case of sign language, the existence of Manually Coded Japanese (MCJ) - which is different from JSL - complicates the situation.

The students of the Course of Sign Language Interpretation at the National Rehabilitation Center for Persons with Disabilities College, where I work as a sign language instructor, learn JSL at the outset upon entering the school. Before they break for summer, they attend classes conducted only in JSL almost everyday. In their second year, they begin the training of translation and interpretation from Japanese to JSL. Their ability to use JSL may be slightly less than the English ability of a non-native English interpreter, as mentioned above.

But I am afraid, in many cases, the kind of sign language taught at the sign language training class managed by local communities, is not JSL. Therefore, many interpreters, who cannot understand JSL used by Deaf people, are produced and they interpret into MCJ, which most Deaf people cannot understand. This situation creates a vicious circle in that, for example, in large conventions, many future interpreters (sign language learners) in the audience use the interpreters on stage signing MCJ as their role models.

Regrettably, it happens that excellent CODA sign language interpreters often do not receive the respect they deserve from MCJ interpreters, sign language learners and even Deaf people who are native signers of JSL. This is not the same case as the problem of the interpretation by the returnee who cannot interpret satisfactorily, as mentioned above.

In the next issue, I will give some examples how the interpretation by CODA is not appreciated.

*Translated from the e-magazine of September 26, 2005 (#062)