Page 170 - Reading Between the Sign Intercultural Communication for Sign Language Interpreters

The Interpreter’s Role and Responsibilities 155

exercising influence upon this imbalance, while mediators fre-
quently “do their best to ensure that any agreement they oversee
is not blatantly unfair to one of the parties” (2.19).
It seems, then, that the bicultural mediator model of sign lan-
guage interpreting is more wishful thinking than a description of
reality. It would be wonderful if we could help each side appreci-
ate the other’s reality, encourage the participants to look beyond
their immediate wants to their long-term interests, and, in the
words of Peter Lovenheim, “unfreeze the parties from their fixed
positions, open them to the possibilities of creative solutions and
finally guide them to a mutually agreed-upon result” (1.16). Un-
fortunately, it would be next to impossible to achieve these goals
while interpreting everything being said and signed from one lan-
guage to another. Presumably, professional mediators work with
parties who speak the same language (or hire an interpreter), so it
makes more sense to conceive of interpreter and mediator as two
different roles that share a common goal: when we do our job
well, each participant is enabled to see things from the other’s per-
spective.
Many interpreters might argue that they identify as a media-
tor only in regard to their position of being in the middle. How-
ever, some Deaf people’s complaint about interpreters who see
themselves in the role of mediator is that they take over the situ-
ation, thereby taking control out of the hands of the Deaf partici-
pants and sometimes unknowingly thwarting their carefully con-
ceived game plans. Eileen Forestal, a well-known Deaf educator
and relay interpreter, relates several examples in her telecourse,
“Understanding the Dynamics of Deaf Consumer-Interpreter Re-
lations.” One instance involved a Deaf supervisor who was meet-
ing with a recently hired hearing employee who seemed to be
having trouble working under a Deaf boss. The Deaf supervisor
decided that what was called for was a firm stance in this meeting
with his new employee, yet he noticed that at the end of the ex-
change the interpreter added a lot of “thank you” and “nice to
meet with you” polite phrases as if they had come from the Deaf
boss, which seemed to undermine his entire strategy. When ques-
tioned, the interpreter, who was apparently unaware of the Deaf
client’s intended toughness, responded that in hearing culture one
must always be polite and say thank you (Forestal 1994).

07 MINDESS PMKR 155 10/18/04, 12:02 PM