Page 16 - Reading Between the Sign Intercultural Communication for Sign Language Interpreters

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Introduction

…a Foreign Service Institute linguist, who, while watch-
ing the evening news, discovered that a Vietnamese in-
terpreter had simply given up when trying to bridge
the gap between a CBS reporter and a Vietnamese vil-
lager. The TV audience watched the reporter ask a ques-
tion, heard it go back and forth between the interpreter
and the villager, and then heard the answer back in
English. What the interpreter had done was simply ask
the villager to count to ten, which he did. Then the in-
terpreter reported what the villager might have said
had he been able to understand the abstract ideas in
the original question.
—Glen Fisher
International Negotiation
This incident from the Vietnam war era provides a striking ex-
ample of the challenges interpreters confront daily. Why did the
interpreter in this case abdicate responsibility for accurately con-
veying the message? Glen Fisher concludes that the interpreter
“faced an impossible task. The life experiences of the reporter
and the villager, and their languages as reflections of culture, pre-
sented too great a contrast” (Fisher 1980, 60–61).
As sign language interpreters, we can empathize with the in-
terpreter described above, although it is hoped that we do not
choose the same solution when faced with the challenge of large

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