Page 172 - Reading Between the Sign Intercultural Communication for Sign Language Interpreters

The Interpreter’s Role and Responsibilities 157

either Japanese or Japanese American. Therefore, the Japanese-
speaking client can more readily identify with the interpreter and
trust that the interpreter will either share some common values
or at least understand where the client is coming from. Although
we hearing sign language interpreters may sometimes share an
identity factor with our Deaf client (e.g., by being black, gay, Jew-
ish), we are never deaf. Consequently, there is not necessarily an
automatic feeling of trust in the interpreter. As members of the
majority culture, we may be seen as being “on the same side” as
the hearing judge, boss, or doctor, despite our language skills. An
excellent way to alleviate this problem is to use a relay interpreter:
a qualified Deaf individual who works as a team with the hearing
interpreter. Unfortunately, we don’t always have the luxury of this
option.
A third distinction involves the majority culture’s assumptions
regarding foreigners as compared with Deaf people. Americans
who are truly ethnocentric assume that the normalcy of everyone
they meet should be judged by how much the person conforms to
or deviates from the norms of American culture. Other, more open-
minded people may expect someone from a foreign country to
have cultural and language differences, but they don’t assume
that a Deaf American has any cultural characteristics that in any
way diverge from hearing American culture. Most people naively
believe that sign language is just English words and word order on
the hands. So when a Chinese person and a Chinese/English in-
terpreter are involved in a meeting with an American, for example,
the American may be a little more flexible and forgiving than when
dealing with a Deaf person whose sign language interpreter, they
assume, is just a device that allows the Deaf person to get the
audio input of English through a visual channel—as if they were
watching a television show and had turned on subtitles.
With these distinctions—visibility, perceived allegiance, and
cultural assumptions in mind—let us look at the manner in which
spoken language interpreters view their own job. I recently inter-
viewed several professors at the Monterey Institute of Interna-
tional Studies, one of the few institutions for training interpreters
and translators, and perhaps the most respected. We compared
preparation and training for our respective professions as well as
the scope of our work, what we see as the limits of our responsi-
bility, and under what models our practitioners work. Before be-
ing accepted into the Monterey Institute’s Graduate School of Trans-

07 MINDESS PMKR 157 10/18/04, 12:02 PM