Page 175 - Reading Between the Sign Intercultural Communication for Sign Language Interpreters

160 Reading Between the Signs

best understand these concepts. Deaf people outside this field
will then be exposed to these signs, which may ultimately trickle
down into more common usage.
In the absence of sign-for-word dictionaries, sign language
interpreters are in a different position from spoken language in-
terpreters in legal situations when admonished to “just interpret,
do not explain.” In order to interpret a legal concept or term for
which there is no single equivalent sign, we must either resort to
fingerspelling the English word (which would more accurately be
considered “transliterating” or shifting from one mode to another
while remaining in the English language) or unavoidably expand-
ing on the concept, if it takes two or more signs to adequately
convey the meaning of a single word. For example, one way to
express the term conservator could be PERSON COURT PICK HELP-
YOU MANAGE-MONEY, DECIDE LIVE WHERE ETC. Sometimes,
although we may be able to translate a word with one compound
sign, we end up illuminating the concept in our choice of selected
terms. For example, in ASL many terms for collective nouns con-
sist of joining together two or three representative members of
the set. Therefore to interpret the word weapon, one may sign
GUN-KNIFE-CLASSIFIER BIG STICK…with appropriate affect to
show that this is not a choice but representative of a category.
Sometimes lawyers are purposefully vague in their choice of terms.
A sign language interpreter cannot accurately interpret a word
such as assault without knowing if the aggression consisted of a
punch to the jaw, a fist in the stomach, or a knee to the groin,
since there is no lexical item to show all the physical possibilities
that could be characterized as an “assault.” This is one of the rea-
sons why legal interpreting can be so difficult and should be un-
dertaken only by experienced interpreters who have had special-
ized training that has prepared them to deal with these challeng-
ing legal nuances.
This disproportionality between the number of signs required
to convey the meaning of one word naturally operates in the other
direction (just as there is not always a word-for-word equivalence
between two spoken languages). When describing a car accident,
for instance, an ASL user can show in just one movement the
physical relationship between the two cars involved before, dur-
ing, and after the impact (using one hand to represent each ve-
hicle simultaneously). This is impossible to interpret into English
in less than a sentence, since we cannot speak simultaneously

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