This article presents an analysis of group-level dynamics in the field of signed language

interpretation. Groups are us/them categorizations involving insider/outsider identities and

memberships. The diagnostic interpretation presented here comes from the situated perspective

of a professional ASL/English interpreter, an outsider who entered the field by chance and has

spent the last twenty years trying to discern why intercultural communication using simultaneous

interpreting appears to be so rife with contention. Theoretically, this is a story of intercultural

encounter and organizational development informed by anti-audist, anti-oralist and pro-

Deafhood sensibilities.

The goal of this article is to propose three, action learning “hypotheses” to be considered

by interpreter educators as conceptual pillars for a comprehensive pedagogical framework that

reinvigorates the original Deaf invention of community interpreting. “Although underexplored,”

Stone (2009) demonstrates conclusively that “a translation norm exists within the Deaf

community” (p. 172). The three hypotheses presented here seek to inspire collective reflection

among stakeholders involved or concerned with simultaneous interpretation. Action learning

describes one kind of relationship between an individual (e.g., a researcher, trainer, student, or

participant/interlocutor) and knowledge. Action learning involves continuous, experiential cycles

of investigation, comprehension, reevaluation, and new/revised comprehension among

stakeholders (Kolb, 1984). In this case, several research methodologies have been merged,

including participant-observation, critical discourse analysis, ethnographic action research, and

some critical participatory action research. Patterns of discourse and social interaction that hold

across multiple research sites have yielded the following tentative suggestions for growing the

1

Kent

Published by Journal of Interpretation

prominence of signed languages, Deaf peoples, and the intercultural communication practice of

simultaneous interpretation. 1

The three hypotheses are presented separately as discrete proposals with specific

supporting evidence; however, they are responsive to a composite cluster of inter-related

phenomena. Untangling such interrelations is an interpretive task that goes beyond description—

the logic used here involves distinguishing levels of social interaction and some of the discursive

and cultural effects of language use. The two threads that tie these interdependent social

phenomena together are time and ghostwriting (Adam, Carty, & Stone, 2011), especially as the

Australian-Irish Deaf culture tradition of ghostwriting is invoked in the professional

performances of American Deaf interpreters (Forestal, 2011) and elaborated upon as a Deaf

translation norm by Deaf British translator/interpreters in broadcast television (Stone, 2009). The

reemergence of Deaf interpreters has been described as “shifting positionality” (Cokely, 2005b,

p. 3). This shift is from a position of dependence or oppression to one of empowerment and

agency. Observable “resistance among hearing interpreters to chang[ing] how they [work]”

(Forestal, 2011, p. 134) is, I argue, a “parallel process” (Alderfer & Smith, 1982) that mirrors the

resistance of interlocutors (especially non-deaf interlocutors) to working with interpreters at all.

The theoretical claim is that temporality is neglected in most reflection and research

about simultaneous interpreting because it has been taken for granted that the speed of

information transfer is a highly significant and non-negotiable measure of effective

interpretation. For instance, four of the eleven (73%) sub-criteria that Lee recommended (2009)

1 Sites for action-learning research include workshops, invited presentations, and some of the

author’s interpreting contexts for which participants (professional colleagues and/or

interlocutors) completed written informed consent forms to authorize their participation in

human subjects research.

2

Kent

Published by Journal of Interpretation

for measuring the quality of delivery involve time overtly: long pauses, hesitations, false starts

and slow speech rate; and four more involve time implicitly: fillers, noise, excessive repairs or

frequent self-corrections. These sub-criteria are aimed at “deviations” from 1) content accuracy,

2) quality of target language production, and 3) “delivery speed” (p. 175). Lee whittles all the

various suggestions for assessment criteria in the academic literature down to these three because

they are the only ones for which rating scales can be established for reference. Lee claims that

the list of criteria may be exhaustive, but the practical use of so many criteria in test settings is a

moot point” (p. 173). Arguments about the values and benefits of taking or using time to

generate better interpretations and/or guarantee mutual understanding among interlocutors are

precluded from scholarly reflection about the quality of communication during simultaneous

interpretation because pace is so easy to measure and the values of speed are presumed.

Some of the temporal effects of privileging the speed of delivery are made visible in

tensions regarding the use of U.S. Certified Deaf Interpreters (CDIs) and British Deaf

Translator/Interpreters (T/Is) whose contemporary professional performances revive deeply

traditional Deaf community practices for mediating intercultural communication. “The cues,

discourse flow, and turn taking would be based on signaling behaviors normally employed by

Deaf persons” (Eldredge, as cited in Forestal, 2011, p. 116). In a similar vein, Adam et al. (2011)

describe “ghostwriting” as language brokering, translation, and interpreting “that Deaf people

have fulfilled as long as there have been signing Deaf communities” (p. 376).