CULTURE SPOT - Interpreters

I thought by now, some of you may be interested in the field of interpreting or maybe thinking about it as a "possible" career choice. Well, I would like to talk with you about interpreting.

What is an interpreter? AN interpreter is a person who goes with a person who is deaf to assist in making effective communication to happen. If a person is hearing and does not understand sign language and wants to talk with a person who is deaf, it is often easiest to use an interpreter. It is the interpreters job to make sure the both the hearing and the deaf persons understand one another. The interpreter facilitates communication.

Twenty or so years ago, interpreters usually learned their skills in religious settings. The churches would teach hearing people how to interpret the church services. As these people learned to interpret better, private industries would offer then jobs as interpreters. Most of these interpreters would take the job and the church would need to train another interpreter. This was not a good way to learn sign language and it also did not teach the person how to be a profession. This is when Interpreter Training Programs (ITP) were developed around the country. These were much more formal and interpreters learned about professional ethics as well as sign language.

Now that we have classes and programs, many more people are learning how to sign. MOST of these people only take one or two classes. This does not qualify them to be interpreters! Interpreters need to go to school for a minimum of two years and most go longer than that.

After an interpreter is finished with an ITP and have had some experience, they may consider taking the national certification test. Currently, there are two certificates that (everyday) sign language interpreters can get. These are the Certificate of Interpreting (CI) or the Certificate of Transliterating (CT). The CI, when passed, means the interpreter understands ASL well enough to listen to spoken English and change it into ASL and to watch ASL and change it into spoken English. The second CT, means they can watch an English based signing system and voice into spoken English and produce an English based signing system. Both of these tasks I have talked about are VERY complex and require both training and a lot of experience.