In situations where you have a person who is culturally deaf whose first language is American Sign Language and a person who speaks English and doesn’t speak ASL, my job is to listen to the English and interpret that into grammatically correct and culturally appropriate sign, and vice versa.
I did a degree in communications at Simon Fraser University. I then entered the American Sign Language and deaf studies program at George Brown and did the ASL interpreting program for three years. After that, I did an interpreting apprenticeship at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf at the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York.
I work in Toronto in a bunch of different settings, including education and business. I enjoy working in the Jewish and the LGBTQ communities when those opportunities come up because I’m gay and Jewish. I grew up in a Jewish environment, I went to Jewish schools – I know the language and culture. It’s easier for me to slip into those contexts and understand the nuances.
I got interested in the area when I travelled to Israel for 10 days with a bilingual/bicultural group. There were 23 deaf students on my bus. After talking to them, I thought I’d really like to learn their language so I could have conversations without an interpreter. I realized interpretation wasn’t so far out of my grasp.
I asked friends if there was something I could do to bridge that divide, and they said we need more interpreters. Now that I’m working in the field, I realize there aren’t enough of us to fill the need.
Part of the program is a course on entrepreneurial skills, which prepared me for freelancing. You learn how to invoice, draw up a service contract and ask different questions to determine if you’re a good fit for a job. As a new grad, I rely heavily on my mentors and give them loose information about an assignment and ask if they think a job might be out of my comfort zone.
You won’t have as much success in the program if you don’t step out into the deaf community. When I started, I went to deaf events probably three to four times a month. Learning any language in a classroom isn’t enough. You need to be using the language on a regular basis with native users.
We also had a lot of exposure to the language through our teachers who are deaf. Many of the classes in upper years are taught in American Sign Language, so you’re using the language not only in practice but in speaking to your friends. Deaf culture is completely different from non-deaf culture.
To be a good interpreter you have to be open-minded and willing to accept critical feedback, because it does come all the time throughout your learning. I always took feedback as a sign someone thought I could get better and tried to run with that. Communicating seamlessly is the best part of the job. The hardest part comes when the topics evoke really strong emotions. Once when I was interpreting, the subject of bullying came up, and it was difficult not give in to emotion. It’s a challenge to balance the being-human part with the professional part, because it’s my job to maintain neutrality.
Sometimes the emotions that come up are really unexpected, but you learn to shove that part of yourself aside.
