POSTPONED: Webinar: Co-operation Challenges by Malin Tesfazion

Anyone booked on will be transferred to the new date automatically when we have one.

Presentation, Outline and Objectives:

Malin Tesfazion is a lecturer in Sign Language interpreting at the Institute for Interpreting and Translation studies at Stockholm University, Sweden.

‘Later this autumn I am happy to present a webinar for ASLI members. I have been an active sign language interpreter for 25 years mainly working for the interpreting unit at Stockholm university. I started teaching interpreting in 2013 and alongside this I am a MA student currently writing on my MA-thesis. This webinar will be based on this study.

Signed language interpreting contains several challenges for interpreters. One of them is to cooperate with both deaf and hearing signers. In interpreted employment and educational settings in Sweden, usually hearing people with varied fluency in signed language can participate.

For different reasons, these hearing participants sometimes choose to sign in interpreter-mediated communication with the deaf colleague. Their choice of language (i.e. signed language when hearing) contributes to a complex interpreting situation, and the cooperation might be challenging for both the signer and the interpreter. The hearing signer must endure hearing the spoken interpretation of his/her own words, and the interpreter has to find words the hearing signer is comfortable with, also being responsive to what terms and expressions the hearing signer prefers. If left unattended, these challenges may lead to a difficult communicative situation for all participants.

The aim of this presentation is to shed light on the question: how do interpreters cooperate mutually with hearing and deaf signers. The cooperative principles of interpretation (Napier 2007), are used as a framework for the study.

The objective of this presentation is for participants to understand the communicative complexities when interpreting for hearing signers and also to get some hands on tips on how to be attentive to possible challenges.’