Why I’m an Interpreter

Over the years, many have asked me if the reason I became an interpreter was because I had deaf family members. My grandmother was deaf in one ear, but I just had to make sure I talked into her hearing ear. So the answer is no, deafness in my family isn’t the reason.

In high school, I was in my own little world most of the time. I didn’t belong to any groups. I would sit in my calligraphy class and listen to the popular girls discuss their lives. I didn’t yearn for popularity. I thought, if that is how one must be to be popular, I’ll pass.

I needed one more class, an elective, to graduate. I had to quickly decide as registration was ending. I saw a class that said, “Sign Language.” Having no frame of reference for American Sign Language, I did, however, have a frame of reference for billboards. I thought it was a class on the special language of gigantic freeway signs, and we would be doing a lot of letter design and painting, an easy A.

When I walked into the classroom, deaf students were talking to each other with their hands, and checking out the new hearing class members. Oh. I liked the teacher right away. I felt at home for some reason and settled into my seat.

The community college down the road had a new interpreter training program. The working interpreters there wore smocks with front side pockets. I thought, that wasn’t too stylish, but I liked the idea of being identified as an interpreter (luckily smocks have gone far, far away into the land of make believe).

My idea was to learn how to interpret, get my AA degree, and then work as a way to continue on to the University to finish my degree in English with an emphasis in teaching special education. Being an interpreter, I had about two or three years in mind. Turns out, I’ve been one a lot longer than that.

They say burn-out in the field can be at five years. So now I would say, I’m a little bit on the crispy side. Truthfully, I still like to interpret when a class is an hour, or if longer, I have a team. But I have put in my time, and my direction has changed. Yet, I’m still in for awhile.

Life has a way of taking the best of plans and scribbling all over them. In high school, I was on somewhat of a utility road with my nibs and ink pots. High school wasn’t the place where I learned too much. But it helped steer me into a life I would have not known, and I am delighted with that concept. I have things to write about now.

Grays & Yellows

Recently, the building complex owners decided to take down a tree. A couple years ago, they chopped down a tree that gave me shade in the summer and beautiful pink blossoms for a brief few weeks in the spring. The mess from falling blossoms didn’t bother me. I liked vacuuming up pink flowers from the carpet after trekking them inside.

The light is different now. The grays of shade are replaced by the white-yellows of glaring sunlight. The ground can no longer hide its gopher holes, and no longer do those spotted mushrooms grow. Right now it is as if the light is too bright for anything else to want to poke out and start to flourish.

The squirrels run down the trunk of another tree and run to the phantom trunk of the chopped down tree. The stump isn’t even there. The squirrels stop short. They look. They dart to the side; they quickly lick their paws; they turn around. They look at me with one eye as if to say, I knew there was a tree here, really there was.

They lost their storage places and maybe even a nest or two. They lost their rivals for territory, the squawking crows and blue jays. Maybe the squirrels don’t miss them so much, maybe they do. Their tails flicker and they dart off across the road.

The sunlight is supposed to encourage growth, but it was in the shade, within the darkness of the leaves, where life was free to be. Adjusting to all this light illuminating the absence will take some time.

What does an interpreter do? She uses both cognitive and physical processes to transfer a spoken language into a visual language. While an interpreter simultaneously translates, she is using, according to research, over 300 processes in the brain. Wow. No wonder after an hour, her wrists and shoulders ache and she’s mentally fatigued in need of a break before the next hour.

An interpreter has a lot to do. She is not only working for the deaf person, she is also working for the hearing person. It is the hearing person who doesn’t have the visual language; yet, this gets lost somewhere.

At an assignment I introduce myself to both the deaf and the hearing speakers and receivers. In talking with each person, I quickly evaluate their language. The hearing person: Speaking pace, does he mumble, vocabulary choices, tone—is he sarcastic? Is he jolly? The deaf person:  Does he use many idioms, his sign style, his speed, his sentence structuring to name a few. It can be knee-knocking time when walking into a situation cold.

My experiences are many. In one assignment, after introductions, I began interpreting. The hearing person didn’t appreciate the distraction and asked me to sit in the back. The deaf person explained the reasoning why sitting in the back or even outside the room, as the hearing person would have preferred, wasn’t feasible. As the deaf person signed and I put their visual language into spoken language, the hearing person walked up to me and asked: “You talk? Why are you talking?” Working conditions can be exasperating.

American Sign Language is different from spoken language in specific ways. Spoken language is linear—one sound can be made or received at a time. Visual language shows a whole scene at one time. ASL is about handshape, palm orientation, location, movement, non-manual expressions, classifiers, inflection. It has a topic-comment syntax structure. A mistake in any of these can mean the difference between Japan and vagina. Imagine the deaf person wondering why the hearing person has asked him if has toured the vagina.

Can you also see why a deaf person would stand back some when an unfamiliar interpreter walks into his meeting with his tax auditor? It isn’t only the interpreter who wants this profession to matter; it is also the deaf person who has to negotiate this whacky profession.

An Interpreter? Part 1

What is wrong with the interpreting for the deaf profession? Plenty. An interpreter—educated, experienced, ethical—has a fight for validation and integrity in her hands. The profession suffers from quality: quality interpreters and quality, life sustaining jobs.

I have been in the profession for decades—I have still to find that job which gives me a standard of living I can count on to sustain me, health benefits, vacation, sick time and retirement. I went through an accredited interpreter training program; I have attended workshops and conventions lead by the top researchers in the field. I study ASL. I have a BA in literature and an M.F.A. because a message cannot be rendered correctly without English and critical thinking skills. I have a plethora of experience. Yet where is the recognition?

There is a standardized Code of Professional Conduct I follow: Confidentiality, turning down an assignment above my skill level to name a few examples. Qualified interpreters know about this ethical document.

The issues are external and internal to the profession. Why is it an interpreter can work for three years in an office and no one knows her name? She is definitely not considered part of the team. Why do companies and agencies balk at paying an interpreter for their work?

The interpreting profession itself has shoddy requirements. There is a professional organization called R.I.D. which has a certification system in place. However, it is full of holes and some wonder if it’s all a scam. There are no minimum requirements. One can be a high school drop- out. I have seen many learn some signs, interview for an interpreter position and given the job. These people, the ones who hire in this slapdash manner, and the ones who get hired keep the profession in the —this is a joke—category.

To belong to R.I.D. without certification costs $90 a year. The dues gives the member a magazine: “Interpreting Views.” Anyone can join. The certification testing is expensive and out-of-pocket. The pass rate is about 50%, and then the interpreter must pay a fee to retake it. Once she is certified, her dues increases; she has to attend expensive workshops to keep earning credits to be able to keep certification.

But what does certification give an interpreter? An educational interpreter without certification can make $23 an hour whereas one with certification can make $25 an hour. Those hours are not guaranteed and benefits do not come with it more often than not.

My point is that an interpreter who has training, skill, education and ethics is lumped in with the ones who have no idea what being an interpreter really entails. She not only has to face being discounted among coworkers, but also has to bear responsibility for the messes unqualified interpreters who work among them always make.

Often the interpreter is seen as an annoyance, as a wasted expense, as peculiar, as someone who isn’t held in any esteem. The odds of getting respect are next to zero. So why am I an interpreter?

This is It

When I was a teenager, my favorite book was Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. The secret mountain hideaway where the world’s greatest innovators and industrialists disappeared fascinated me to no end.

I couldn’t help but wonder if such a place could exist in our exposure happy society. Rumors that Elvis is still alive made me think of a secret place where people can hide. Ruminations that maybe Jim Morrison didn’t really overdose made my ears wiggle. And now Michael Jackson has a new song. His swan song.

I envision the three of them together now in a secret mountain hideaway. All with their death by drug overdose in common as if that story is just recycled due to lack of imagination or laziness. They could be sipping virgin Pina Coladas in absolute comfort in a place where weather surpasses L.A.’s. What does it matter to them if the story isn’t original?

Of course this is a Rand fantasy. I know that the new song of Michael’s that is sneaking around the internet was recorded and named, “This is It” before his demise. I know that the icons Elvis, Jim and Michael have become are constructs of the entertainment industry. They were rewarded though. They were spoiled, pampered and enabled. It would be hard to imagine the three of them sitting there in their ergonomic chaise lounges discussing health care or the latest version of Halo.

But then again it could happen. I met Michael Jackson once when he was on the cusp of becoming extraordinary. It was chicken that briefly brought us together. He came into the fast food restaurant where I worked. It was closing time.

This was the Michael Jackson right before his album Off the Wall when he still toured with his brothers. This was just a member of a well-known family who lived right around the corner and up the hill. No King of Pop nonsense, no glassy eyed stares and high-pitched voice, no sequined glove. His face was as it should have been, golden brown skin, curly hair, a few inches taller than my 5’7”, regular clothes. He was handsome in an average way, his dark eyes his best feature. His voice was soft, his presence calm, he wasn’t looking for fans to bestow adulation.

Our conversation went something like this:
“I would like the chicken cooked up fresh,” he said.
“It will be 15 minutes or more. We have to reheat the oil vats.”
“I’ll wait,” he said in a way that showed he had patience or maybe he had nothing else to do that night. “And I would like my corn from the back.”
“This is fresher.”
“From the back please.”

The world didn’t collapse when these three left. There’s no doubt they are gone. But a secret utopia does sound nice doesn't it?

Bluebird

A cool, windless summer morning, as the hot air balloon lifted off the ground, I wondered why I didn’t have any fear. I detest heights. I get dizzy and pull my loved ones away from railings and windows. They could fall through the sky. Yet my father, his wife, my son, the pilot and I floated higher into the arms of the quiet winds’ decisions.

Our ride wasn’t all for pleasure. We had a purpose. I cradled a box inside a blue velvet drawstring bag. My sister Gere’ (Jer-ray) had died unexpectedly from a seizure. She had suffered from them most of her life. An MRI revealed calcified lesions from old brain damage caused by seizing, new lesions showed her current struggle.

My sister’s life was one of great tragedy. Failures from many people sent her on one collision course after another—state hospitals, group homes, street life, behavioral health lock ups. But she always managed a smile and a hug like the maltreated doggie who keeps on loving.

She spent her life hindered by forces beyond her control. So as I looked up at the fire from the propane tank keeping the air hot, the colors of the balloon—blue, red, yellow, violet, green and black, I thought of the rendition of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” by Ray Charles and Johnny Mathis.

I handed the box to my father, my arms abruptly as light as the balloon. And we watched tiny wild turkeys run around the countryside below while we floated peacefully preparing ourselves for release, for the sense of freedom and letting her go. And in my mind’s sounds Ray and Johnny sang for Gere’: “Where troubles melt like lemon drops/Away above the chimney tops/

That's where you'll find me.”

Somewhere way up high.

Pits

The thing about pitbulls is that they really do bite, cliché’ it seems, like Stephen King’s morphed Cujo. This I experienced firsthand recently. While many insist pits are misunderstood, the reasons why an unprovoked pit will bite and a lab in the same situation just wags its tail is too disturbing for an easy answer.

I don’t ask for drama. I don’t welcome traumatic events. I don’t relish anything about victimhood. Yet, there I was. A UPS man had delivered a package to the wrong address and instead of calling the company and going through all of that, I decided to drop it off on my way home. It was sunny and warm, a typical shorts wearing day. It was late afternoon and this neighborhood, with all manicured lawns, was very quiet.

Grasping the package and starting up the driveway, a yellow lab appeared from the house next door. Friendly lab, no big deal. But the silence caught my attention and out from behind one of the trucks parked next door, a brindle, stout male pitbull, tail straight up, stood in a crouch. He was going to jump me. As instinct, I turned to protect my throat. The pit attacked my left calf. He bit down, punctured it, chewed. I thought that was how I was going to die, torn apart, closed casket guaranteed. And then for some unknown reason he let go. He retreated to his place on his porch, and I to my car.

Trying to prevent even more blood from dripping onto the carpet while dialing the police, I kept saying to myself, “He bit me. A pitbull bit me.” Why? The lab didn’t need lunch. It could have been worse. Stitches wouldn’t be required. A pitbull bit me.

I know about dogs with bad reputations. I used to have a Doberman pinscher. When walking him, people would make an arch to avoid him. I loved that dog. Did I think he would bite unprovoked? So I’m not unsympathetic. But pitbull owners have a responsibility to deal with this issue. Yet does this world need even the possibility of intact male pitbulls escaping from their yards? Pits are misunderstood? I can’t reconcile this.

Especially with what happened next. A friend of the owner arrived, argued with me until I showed him my bloody leg. He called the owner and then proceeded to unload fishing poles from his truck with the dog following him, off leash, with a ball in his mouth. I waited in my car for animal control and the owner to appear, in the heat, my windows rolled down just enough for air but not enough for an irrational pitbull to jump through. I hate being a victim. It ruins a perfectly fine day.

Animal control took the dog for a 10 day mandatory quarantine. The owner couldn’t believe his pit would bite. And I, sigh, had to go to yet another doctor at least 3 times so far, for a tetanus shot, wound cleaning, antibiotics, an injection of an antibiotic and more antibiotics. I am feeling uncertain about going out looking from side to side for something to appear. It’s the look you get when faced with an experience where all control has vanished: the jeep driver who thinks he can blow a stop sign, the restaurant that allows their food to sit out too long to grow bacteria and then serve it, the ones who think it can all be undone with a little doggie treat.