Webinar: Translating the Deaf self by Jemina Napier

FULLY BOOKED Email training@asli.org.uk to join the waiting list.

This webinar will be presented in BSL with interpreted English voiceover

Abstract:

The ‘Translating the Deaf Self’ project, funded by the UK Arts & Humanities Research Council, sought to explore whether and how translation might be constitutive of Deaf culture(s). This project asked:

(2) What is the impact of consistently experiencing existence to others as a translated (interpreted) self on personal identity, achievement and well being?

It took a novel interdisciplinary approach in combining Translation and Interpreting Studies, Deaf Studies and Social Research.  

The three stages of data generation involved (i) scoping the subject matter with Deaf community participatory groups, (ii) conducting interviews with other stakeholders including interpreters, parents of deaf children, and hearing people with deaf colleagues, and (iii) exploration of real-life experience and co-production of interpretation and significance in a range of contexts using videoed observation and think-aloud protocols.

This webinar will be tailored to sign language interpreters to give an overview of the findings of focus groups with interpreters, hearing people and deaf professionals on their perspectives on the experiences of deaf people only being ‘known’ through translation, with respect to theperceptions of mediated communication as a consistently recurring condition in Deaf people’s lives and responses to that sociological, linguistic and cultural condition. There will be a particular focus on what interpreters can learn from deaf and hearing people’s perceptions of their experiences, and what interpreters have to say about their sense of responsibility in this context.

Presenter bio

Jemina Napier is Professor and Chair of Intercultural Communication and Director of the Centre for Translation & Interpreting Studies in Scotland, in the School of Social Sciences at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, UK. She has been a practising sign language interpreter since 1988, and is accredited to work between English and BSL, Auslan and International Sign. So inevitably her research focuses on sign language intercultural communication, conducting linguistic, social and ethnographic explorations of direct and interpreter-mediated communication to inform intercultural communication, translation and interpreting studies, applied linguistics, and deaf studies theories. She is also interested in interpreting research methods and interpreting pedagogy research. She was founding editor of the International Journal of Interpreter Education and is a Fellow of the UK Chartered Institute of Linguists and the Association of Sign Language Interpreters UK, and a member of the World Federation of the Deaf expert group on accessibility.