Page 193 - Reading Between the Sign Intercultural Communication for Sign Language Interpreters
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178 Reading Between the Signs
ing American culture. So too is the status reflected in being a pro-
fessional, earning money, and achieving recognition through de-
grees and certificates.
Deaf culture, in contrast, places more emphasis on contribut-
ing to the group than on individual achievement. Approval of some-
thing or someone is achieved through an informal word-of-mouth
process. The current NAD test retains several features of the early
RID test: “candidates are rated locally,” the “evaluators work as a
group,” and the face-to-face format makes possible “intuitive as-
sessment of mood, attitude, relationship to community” (Moore
1997, 15–17).
Power—let’s face it—is also an underlying issue here. Who
will have the right and ability to decide these questions? Currently,
there are different opinions regarding how to involve Deaf people
in positions of power in RID. There are probably a few who would
advocate letting the Deaf control their organization, NAD, while
we, the hearing interpreters, chart the course of our profession
into the twenty-first century. Even putting aside the point that the
number of Deaf relay interpreters is increasing, I suspect that most
of us would not share that separatist sentiment. It is our challenge
to find a way to include both cultural vantage points. Wouldn’t a
test designed to include the elements valued by each culture, tech-
nical skill as well as personal attitude and rapport, benefit all par-
ties? Although it might make our deliberations longer and our
testing system more complicated, in the end we would all be en-
riched by the experience.
As Lane has eloquently put it,
The truest friends of deaf people…will work together
with deaf individuals and organizations to forge a hear-
ing and deaf partnership…. For that partnership to be
forged, both parties must bring their cultural frames
into consciousness, construct a mutual understanding
of those frames and make an empathetic leap, trying
to position themselves at each other’s “center.” (200)
Taking Responsibility for
Cultural Adjustment
Thus far in this chapter we have established that rather than mod-
eling ourselves on another profession, we must decide the pa-
07 MINDESS PMKR 178 10/18/04, 12:02 PM