Page 207 - Reading Between the Sign Intercultural Communication for Sign Language Interpreters

192 Reading Between the Signs

Inoculated Questions
Medical inoculations often inject a person with a mild form of the
unwanted disease in order to achieve immunity. Similarly, when
the cultural tendencies are very strong, it can sometimes be effec-
tive to specifically state what kind of response you wish the re-
spondent to avoid in his or her answer. For example, one chal-
lenging task is to interpret a question from English that asks for a
simple yes or no response. Knowing that in ASL it is common to
supply background or context in answering questions, it can be
helpful to acknowledge that fact instead of just hoping it won’t
happen. Strict expectations of adherence to a yes/no format are
of critical importance in legal settings, but this type of question
comes up in many other situations as well.
In the following example, “Have you informed your supervi-
sor of these problems with Joe, your coworker?” you can predict
the types of elaborative details the Deaf client may be tempted to
add but which may be more appropriate for a later time. Instead
of ruling out any mention of these details, your inoculated ques-
tion could specify that those will be asked about in a moment.
Here is one option: FINISH INFORM SUPERVISOR PROBLEM WITH
J-O-E? (HAPPEN++ JOE BAWL-YOU-OUT, YOU MAD CLASH,
HOLD EXPLAIN LATER) WANT KNOW SUPERVISOR YOU INFORM
FINISH. YES NO WHICH?

Signposting and Road Mapping
Just as signs on the highway such as “Detour” and “Construction
Zone” alert us that the road ahead is not what we anticipated, we
can add phrases or sentences to our interpretations that clue in
consumers that the statements to follow may not be in the form
they expect. For hearing consumers, prefacing your interpreta-
tion with phrases such as “Let me give you some background…”
or “I would like to go back to the beginning and explain how this
all started…” may help them wait patiently for the point or allow
them to see why the Deaf consumer began his or her comments
with details instead of an introductory statement.
What form would signposting take for Deaf consumers? A more
visual analogy might be called “road mapping.” Instead of adding
an explanatory phrase, road mapping lays out a picture of the
conversational journey ahead. Suppose that a hearing boss calls a

08 MINDESS PMKR 192 10/18/04, 12:02 PM