#Interpreters

[gayanddeaf]

until i went to college, i never really understood just how hard interpreters work to provide us with accessible experience. of course, it was emphasized in the deaf community to always thank the interpreters and i did that every time.

but the thing was: i am one of the lucky few who was privileged enough to spend a majority of my life growing up in the Deaf world where i had direct communication with others. sure, i had to use interpreters from time to time, but these were one offs, such as attending a show or going to doctor's appointment or using video relay if a business, for whatever stupid reason, didn't have an email address.

going into college, truly having to utilize interpreters for the first time, having to communicate through third party, i remember feeling, for the first time ever, that i was in the minority and it was an extremely isolating experience. i didn't speak the same language, didn't share the same culture, didn't share the same identity with anyone in my major.

and the only reason why i can even establish interactions with anyone in my major was because of the interpreters. i remember having this feeling inside me of how much i hated having to use them. i went oh, we need interpreters...we should not...but we do.

my appreciation for interpreters deepened once one of my friends-- a new signer-- was taking an asl class and she asked me and my other friend help on translating a paragraph from english to asl. it took me and my friend 5 minutes to collaboratively figure out how to say something like "I went inside the store to grab ice cream. After paying, I got into my car. I arrived to my apartment and began to eat ice cream." and i was astonished by how interpreters are able to do this, and on the spot too, WHILE processing incoming information, all at once.

from that point on, i always showed upmost respect towards the interpreters.

[saywhat-politics]

Since Trump took office all videos with American Sign Language interpreters have been removed from the White House website and YouTube channels. What could be the point of this beyond pure cruelty?

[theothersarshi]

I have interpreted for free as someone with no training a few times and oh my god i had respect for the job before but even more now. Not even just how exhausting it is to do over longer times but also how fucking unhelpful some people are when you're there to translate for them.

Oh, definitely.

I mean, it's always difficult to estimate how difficult a job is, especially if you've never done it before, but some people really expect some jobs to be super easy.

I once interpreted for someone I knew on a whim, because he didn't understand English very well and things were going far above his head - and, I don't know, it seemed like the proper thing to do? It wasn't a very long exchange, anyway.

So afterwards he said, "Wow, you really suck at translating, don't you?"

Me, "?!?!"

Him, "You were going "um" and "err" there. If you knew English very well, you could do it properly and just repeat what they say."

Like. Dude. Your English is so bad. You're basically monolingual. I was doing this. Because you were left out. Also. How would you like. A kick to the shins.

[basicallyanotherwitchesthing]

Gustavus Hindman Miller - 10,000 Dreams Interpreted - Aquarius - 1975 (cover illustration by Gillian Hills)

[lifeinacartoon]

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Take That (@takethat)

So beautiful to see Take That recognising Deaf and Hard of hearing community <3

[united-nations-headquarters]

we briefly interrupt our regular UN content to appreciate this UN interpreter's amazing hair

[that-1-url]

Interpreters?

I have been searching for answers to this question and haven’t found anything, so I thought I would just ask. I am writing a story with a mute character who uses sign language to communicate. Since most people aren’t fluent in asl (or other sign languages) I was thinking of giving him an interpreter. In my research I realized I wasn’t sure if there were interpreters for m/Mute sign language users but when I tried to search to see if that was a thing, only d/Deaf / HoH as well as spoken language interpreting came up, with no mention of Mute people. Is it a thing for m/Mute sign language users to have interpreters? Sorry if this is a stupid question

(also apologies for any spelling mistakes it is not my strong suit)

[gayanddeaf]

had a dream where i bumped into an interpreter who i haven’t seen since i was like ten. as we were chatting, one random stranger passed by and complimented me on my outfit, and the interpreter interpreted that one sentence. she then proceeded to bill me for the service. while confused, i still paid for it, not paying attention at all to the price.

when i saw the receipt, she had charged me $669 for interpreting a single line of compliment. oh i was so livid and was so prepared to sue her.

[sadclowncentral]

i had a dream that time travel was invented and too many people choose to travel back in time to save the titanic from sinking (the question of whether unsinking of the titanic deserved so much attention in the face of human history was the subject of both heavy academic and online discourse), which caused a rift in the space-time-continuum that led to the titanic showing up indiscriminately all over the world’s oceans and sea in various states of sinking.

this caused a lot of issues both in terms of fixing said space-time-continuum and in terms of nautical navigation, and after a long and heavy battle in the international maritime organization it was decided that the bureaucratic burden of dealing with this was to be upon Ireland, much to their dismay. the Irish Government then released an app for all sailors and seafarers so they could report titanic sightings during their journeys, even though they heavily dissuaded you from reporting them given the paperwork it caused.

anyway i woke up with a clear image of the app in my head and needed to recreate it for all of you:

[theothersarshi]

I’m a public defender in the U.S. and have had a good number of clients who don’t speak English. And omfg translators should be paid a million dollars. I can’t imagine the skill it takes to listen to someone talk and immediately repeat it accurately in another language. Especially when people talk over each other and don’t understand that they need to break up their sentences so the translator can translate!!! Google Translate or whatever would NOT cut it even a little bit.

Hi!

First of all, thank you so much for the really neat ask! <3 It made my morning.

People who can do that are indeed amazing - but while they're often called translators in current speech, they're a distinct group: interpreters!

There's a distinction between translators, who work with written texts, and interpreters, who work with speech, because while both require a good command of two languages and the skill to render meaning from one language to another, there are some skills which don't overlap.

Interpreters are amazing for the exact reasons you describe - I'm in awe of them, too. They're quick thinkers, articulate, capable of focusing and doing their job on the spot. Whoosh! You say it, they render it. They're lightning and their working memory and pool of on-hand knowledge need to be awesome!

Translators like me are slow creatures. We work with text, and it needs to be perfect, or close enough. Sure, I can tippity-tap on my keyboard at a million miles per hour if the text is easy (I kind of miss my early days of literary translation because it flowed so smoothly), but if you're a good translator you need to stop and take it slowly.

I verify grammar a lot (yes, even in my native Romanian; IRL I have the privilege to use regional/non-preferred forms, at work I don't). I double check to make sure that a certain word means what I think it means. I run odd phrasings through the Urban Dictionary. I need to be proper and accurate.

I also convey the style of the author and work with what they intended to make sure the text sounds as if they'd prepared it for Romanian. I can do fun things like add puns, make things rhyme, give 'em an old-style-y polish. I can also pretend I'm invisible when writing troubleshooting instructions, or writing finding brief translations for UI buttons.

You'll indeed have some people who are both translators and interpreters and I have mad respect for them and the fact that they can work both quickly and slowly, that they can both interpret on the fly and take their time with researching and rephrasing.

I, alas, am only a translator. Typing, patience and perfectionism are my things. Quick reactions and choosing options that are good enough? Less so. Accurately understanding what strangers say? Hit and miss (even in Romanian; it takes me a short time to decrypt new people properly). I can relay some things on the fly if really needed because I do Know Words, but I couldn't do it like an interpreter would.

[basicallyanotherwitchesthing]

Alex Nagib-Rath - Como Interpretar Los Sueños - Aura/Everest - 1968

[shutyoureyes7]

It's not a jab if it's true. It's just facts. You cannot make gold from sh**, as we Germans say. And you cannot interpret an unintelligible man's words intelligibly. It is known.

The live-TV interpreter who said "Sag mal, wie lange wollt ihr bei dem Scheiß bleiben?!" has made a statement. I admire him hugely for not apologizing for what he said, or even technically retracting it, at any point in this statement. Instead, he takes the opportunity to make a jab at Trump's inability to put a reasonable sentence together:

Jetzt reagiert auch Dolmetscher Frank Deja, der für den Fauxpas gesorgt hatte. "Ich war überzeugt, ich hätte mich stumm geschaltet. Ich habe aber im Eifer des Gefechts die falsche Taste gedrückt. Wir haben als Dolmetscher sogenannte Räusper-Tasten, mit denen wir uns stummschalten können. Dann geht das eben nicht über den Sender – und meine Aussage sollte natürlich auch nicht über den Sender gehen", erklärt er "n-tv". Seinen Zwischenruf solle man nicht als politisches Statement deuten. "Nein, das wäre ganz verfehlt. Die politischen Inhalte sind nicht das Problem", meint Deja und fügt hinzu: "Ich dolmetsche ständig Leute, mit deren politischen Inhalten ich nicht einverstanden bin. Das Problem bei Trump war, dass er auf einmal anfing, frei zu assoziieren oder dreimal hintereinander dasselbe zu sagen. Diesen wirren Gedankensprüngen zu folgen, ist die Schwierigkeit beim Dolmetschen." Er erklärt: "Wenn ein Redner mit geordneten Gedanken redet, dann kann man, sobald der Satz angefangen hat, schon ungefähr erahnen, wie es weitergeht. Man kann auf dieser Welle weiter surfen. Aber bei Trump ist das unmöglich."

(source)

[carsonjonesfiance]

“This thing is legally dubious and therefore technically unenforceable.” Is not a “useless liberal gotcha” it’s how legalism works in this country. Tying up stupidly worded EOs in court is the quickest way to keep them from being implemented. It is the definition of “doing something.” But it doesn’t usually involve much tweeting so of course a certain type of leftist feels obligated to mock it.

[tawnysoup]

Finally now that the comic is fully public on comicfury, I get to share it with all of you here, too <3

If you enjoyed, please consider supporting by buying a PDF of the comic on itch.io: https://tawnysoup.itch.io/home-in-the-woods