Sign Language Interpreting Research Papers (original) (raw)

- by Heather Mole
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- Deaf studies, Critical Pedagogy, Sign Languages, Interpreting Studies

Abstract. In RoboCup Middle Size league (MSL) the main referee uses assisting technology, controlled by a second referee, to support him, in particular for conveying referee decisions for robot players with the help of a wireless communication system. In this paper a vision-based system is introduced, able to interpret dynamic and static gestures of the referee, thus eliminating the need for a second one. The referee's ges-tures are interpreted by the system and sent directly to the Referee Box, which sends the proper commands to the robots. The system is divided into four modules: a real time hand tracking and feature extraction, a SVM (Support Vector Machine) for static hand posture identification, an HMM (Hidden Markov Model) for dynamic unistroke hand gesture recognition, and a FSM (Finite State Machine) to control the various system states transitions. The experimental results showed that the system works very reliably, being able to recognize the combination of gestures a...

- by Paulo Trigueiros
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- Computer Vision, Sign Language, Machine Learning, Sign Languages

The concept of ‘role of interpreter’ as a discrete rigid construct has been used historically in ways that actually inhibit (rather than facilitate) interaction amongst participants. The paper presents aspects of a new paradigm that defines role not in a static way, but in a dynamic way that requires interpreters make active choices about managing the myriad factors that foster successful interactions.

"En 2013, le Conseil de la radiodiffusion et des télécommunications canadiennes (CRTC) consultait la population canadienne sur la faisabilité d’implantation d’un service de relais vidéo (SRV), un service de téléphonie à distance entre personnes vivant avec une surdité et personnes entendantes, impliquant le relais vidéo par un interprète. Dès quelques 3300 observations transmises par la population, le CRTC a reçu en audience une cinquantaine d’intervenants issus des différents groupes concernés (groupes de défense de droit, associations de citoyens sourds, utilisateurs de services, formateurs d’interprètes, fournisseurs de services, milieu de la téléphonie, milieu d’interprétation, etc.).
C’est dans ce cadre que nous avons voulu inscrire une position sur le développement et l’implantation de ces nouveaux services en accord avec la configuration actuelle d’offre de service d’interprétation en présence. La position que nous défendons au fil de set article est celle de l’implantation en accord avec les réalités des milieux concernés, non seulement celle des utilisateurs de service, mais aussi des travailleurs (les interprètes) des employeurs (les fournisseurs de service). Dans cet article, nous présenterons notre point de vue sur trois principales questions ayant fait l’objet de discussions aux audiences du CRTC, la pertinence d’un tel service pour la population sourde, les conséquences du travail en SRV pour les interprètes, ainsi que les conséquences structurelles de l’implantation d’un SRV, notamment sur la disponibilité du bassin d’interprète."

- by Anne-Marie Parisot
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- Sign Language Interpreting, VRS, Quebec Sign Language

This case study documents a pilot where situated-learning was used to train students at level 6 (final year) of the BA (hons.) BSL/English interpreting programme, in medical/healthcare interpreting. The learning experience was situated within the clinical simulation suite at the University of Wolverhampton and student interpreters had the opportunity to interpret for a real healthcare practitioner and a deaf patient in a series of carefully constructed roleplays, designed to provide as authentic an experience as possible.

This is a study of ambiguities and tensions that occur within the role of the bilingual/bicultural researcher in an ethnographic study. This manuscript presents an analysis of three instances from two interviews in a study on the acculturation of deaf students in deaf kindergarten classrooms in Japan and the US. This is an auto-ethnographic analysis of conflicts found in fluctuating between multiple roles: research assistant, interpreter, cultural mediator, and sociolinguistic consultant. In these examples my bicultural knowledge allowed me to identify “hidden” meanings overlooked by other members of the research team. However, my interpreter role at times made it awkward to contribute my insights to the research team. The findings of this study show that interpreters who are linguistically and culturally in-between the researchers and researched play a crucial but delicate role in cross-cultural studies. INTRODUCTION Removing our shoes at the edge of the tatami mat, our group of se...

- by Hadassa Rodrigues
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- Terminology, Sign Language Interpreting, Terminology Translation
- by Rafael Ugarte Chacón
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- Aesthetics, Theatre Studies, Deaf studies, Disability Studies

Traite de l’application du modèle d'efforts et de l'équilibre d'interprétation de Daniel Gile à la profession d’interprète en langue des signes québécoise. Ce modèle comporte de grandes qualités ; il est très accessible et met en perspective la simultanéité du processus d'interprétation tout en offrant une grille permettant d’analyser les conditions de réalisation de l'acte d'interprétation. Ce modèle permet d'identifier les risques de défaillance dans le travail de l’interprète et d'expliquer certaines erreurs d'interprétation. C’est ce que nous voulons explorer en ce qui a trait à l’interprétation d’une langue orale vers une langue de signes.

- by Danielle-Claude Bélanger
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- Sign Language Interpreting
- by Karen Bontempo
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- Sign Language Interpreting

This goal of this study was to ascertain the level of burnout in interpreters in the state of Ohio who were employed or have been employed as educational and/ or community interpreters. The intent was to investigate if a relationship existed between burnout, previously identified variables, and newly identified variables for those groups of interpreters. Previous studies have identified some variables, but only concentrated on their main effects. This study used those previously identified variables and combined them with newly identified variables for this population in order to ascertain unique variance. These newly identified variables included the interpreter’s locale (rural, suburban, urban), the setting in which they primarily work (educational vs. community), requirements each setting may entail (continuing education to maintain licensure and/or certification), and misconceptions of the deaf or hearing consumer. This study also further investigated previously researched variables to gauge reliability. Those variables included cumulative trauma disorders (CTDs), stress associated with discrepant pay, and role overload.
The hypotheses regarding an interaction between role overload and K-12 interpreters, an interaction between interpreters’ locale and setting, Cumulative Trauma Disorders (CTD), maintaining an interpreting license through professional development, certified vs. non-certified, K-12 vs. postsecondary, and licensed vs. certified were all non-significant. The following constructs were predictive in the subscale(s) of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and/or reduced personal accomplishment. There was statistical significance found in stress associated with interpreters’ level of pay, locale of interpreters, locale independent of interpreters’ setting, maintaining national certification through professional development independent of interpreters’ locale, interpreters’ perception of misconceptions held by the hearing consumer, interpreters’ perception of misconceptions held by the hearing consumer independent of educational level, interpreters’ perception of job demands, interpreters’ perception of job control, interpreters’ perception of job control independent of job demands. Only one set of research hypotheses was predictive in all three burnout subscales: interpreters’ perception of misconceptions held by the deaf consumers.

This chapter has an intentional ethnographic "flavor" or " spice ". Reader will perceive that we decided to not only break the formal register of Anglo academic writing, but we have also desired that the content and our approach and display information reflects an experience, a particular kind of relationships, a way of seeing the world of the deaf and their interpreters. A look-always partially of course-in all possible ways. In the micro-novel The Incredible and sad tale of Innocet Eréndira and Her Heartless Grandmother (1978 [2010]) García Márquez features three characters: Eréndira (a prostituted young), Grandmother (a lady pimp) and Ulises (a liberating lover). We propose these characters in García Márquez's novel as metaphors for rethinking the social representations of sign language interpreters in Latin America. Are Latin American sign language interpreters as exploited young, who are waiting for developed countries to provide salvation come? Are they as heartless hearings looking to take advantage of the Latin American interpretation business and wealth herself at expense of deaf communities? Are interpreters as liberators, agents of change and social paradigms in the region? We suggest that the answer to these questions is complex, profiles constantly overlap. Through an interview to Latin American interpreter of experience, and a critical regional essay, we hope to contribute to rethink the ways of seeing the relationship between interpreters and deaf in Latin America.

A study was conducted on four-year ASL Programs where students can earn a degree in ASL at three institutions. The study consisted of a document review and interviews to determine similarities and differences between curriculum design and program implementation. Each of the programs utilized a different model for students to progress through their ASL academic career. However a lot of curriculum requirements between the programs were very similar. Similarities and differences are identified in this paper as well as bridging the gap between ASL Education and Interpreter Education which means making sure students graduate meeting expectations to enter Interpreter Education programs. A result of the study identified conflicts between existing ASL and Interpreting Programs and a model is presented to prevent this conflict when implementing ASL Studies programs.

- by Della Goswell
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- Sign Language Interpreting

This paper introduces the application of the Signs of Ireland (SOI) digital corpus in teaching at the Centre for Deaf Studies (CDS), Trinity College Dublin (TCD). The SOI corpus is one of the largest digital corpora of a signed language in the world, and is the most richly annotated. The extent of annotation allows for the corpus to be used not only by linguists, but also by teachers of Irish Sign Language, sign language interpreter trainers , and students themselves, opening up the possibility of greater autonomy in learning as well as the opportunity to map the SOI corpus onto broader developments. These developments include the blended learning honours degree in Deaf Studies, due to be launched in 2009 with This paper introduces the Signs of Ireland (SOI) corpus, a digital corpus that is richly annotated, and which is multi-functional with respect to the work of the Centre for Deaf Studies (CDS), Trinity College Dublin (TCD). I will outline some of these aims, namely, the linguistic description of Irish Sign Language (ISL) as well as harnessing the corpus for use in teaching and learning in ISL classes, linguistics classes, and in interpreting and translation classes. I will demonstrate some of the search functionality of the corpus and outline the nature of some of the exercises that have been developed using the SOI corpus. I will also mention some examples of how the SOI corpus has been leveraged for assessment purposes and blended learning delivery (i.e. courses that are partly delivered in a face-to-face environment, and partly in an online environment).

An adequately sized corpus is a prerequisite for any automatic sign language translation and recognition systems. Indian Sign Language (ISL) used by Deaf community in India, does have linguistically meaningful constituents and structural properties. According to [Zeshan Ulrike (2006)], it is language with visual-spatial modality used by the Deaf for communication. For purpose of sign language corpus of the domain 'disaster messages', we created the Indian Sign Language corpus, based on the disaster messages provided by National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA). The messages were converted into Indian Sign Language. It was later annotated using HamNoSys resulting in a rich bilingual text-based sentence corpus, using motion capture and video tracing.

This study investigated how and when hearing interpreters in the United States decide there is a need for a Deaf interpreter for court proceedings. Previous publications have strongly suggested that it is best practice to work with a Deaf interpreter for specific situations (NCIEC, 2007). The author utilized two frameworks: Brennan & Brown’s (1997) Equality before the Law, and Mathers’ (2009) Deaf interpreters in court: an accommodation that is more than reasonable to design a study that will bring to light the criteria used by hearing ASL-English interpreters to determine when a Deaf interpreter should be utilized. This research also explored the hearing interpreter’s view of the Deaf interpreter and allowed for discussion of experience of working as the hearing member of a Deaf-hearing team in the courtroom. Findings suggest that hearing signed language interpreters are generally in alignment with best practices in working with Deaf interpreter specialists, but significant inconsistencies and barriers remain. Further research into this configuration and its accompanying dynamics is needed.

Although Deaf interpreters have been working in a lay capacity for centuries and
professionally for decades, their work often remains misunderstood, marginalized and
underutilized. Analyzing the work of Deaf interpreters becomes problematic when the source
language they are using—that provided by a Hearing interpreter—is inconsistent. There is a
dearth of team training opportunities for Hearing interpreters working alongside Deaf
interpreters, and this severely limits the co-creation of effective translations for a range of clients
in diverse settings. This study examines communication concurrent to active interpretation
within Deaf-Hearing teams and reveals a critical component in generating successfully
interpreted interactions, now known as “signposting”. I seek herein to refine our understanding
of signposting and to reveal the wider range of neutral channel communications occurring within
the Deaf and Hearing team.

his report summarizes the key findings of five workgroups held at the 2nd North American Summit
on Interpreting, convened by IntepretAmerica on
June 17-18, 2011 in Washington, D.C. The purpose
of the Summit was to provide a national forum for the interpreting profession. The five workgroups focused on topics seen as vital to the future of the profession. These topics were:
• Professional associations
• Certification and credentialing
• Education and training
• Legal and advocacy concerns
• Technology
The workgroups’ participants came from all major interpreting sectors. They included not only interpreters but language service providers, vendors, technology developers, association presidents, educators, trainers, researchers and interpreting representatives from Europe, Canada and Mexico, among others. The findings outlined in this paper distill opinions and voices from the profession as a whole.

- by Dr Kyra Pollitt
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- Sign Language Interpreting

James Smedley Brown was a meteoric yet overlooked figure in mid-nineteenth century American Deaf education. By the time he left the profession, he had served as the superintendent of two schools for the Deaf, contributed to the emerging national deaf education dialogue, and pioneered vocational education in asylums and institutions for the Deaf in the Midwestern and Southeastern United States. Although his professional career lasted only twenty years, his contributions were publicly noted by his professional peers and beloved by his students and their communities, but remain largely unknown to history. Most notably, Brown’s two attempts at signed language dictionaries in 1856 and 1860 would be the first — and for almost fifty years, the only — published reference works on the developing sign language in the United States, pushing back the timeline of exploring lexemic parameters an entire century before Stokoe, Casterline, and Cronenberg.

Provides a window on sign language interpreting theory, particularly on the subject of interpreting from a signed two-way interpreted discourse into voice. Say What? challenges perceived common knowledge and suggests alternative ways. Interpreting theories and issues discussed include:
• Accommodation
• Audience Design
• Codes of Ethics
• Core Meaning and Intent
• Expert Memory
• Grammatical Person
• Interlocutor Expectations
• Informational Reception Apprehension
• Linguistic Back Channelling
• Perceptual Defence
• Referred Trauma
• SKOPOS Theory
• Working Memory
When this subject is debated by anyone who has an interest in sign language interpreting, the conversation often moves into the area of taboo, profanities, etc. There are three chapters on the subject of swearing in which many of the above theories are discussed.

Ruolo, responsabilità e formazione dell’interprete della Lingua dei Segni sono andati formandosi progressivamente negli ultimi 50 anni, partendo da un contesto del tutto deregolamentato e di delega al volontariato intra od extra famigliare, fino ad arrivare alla moderna percezione di una professione che richiede standard formativi e qualitativi sempre più elevati. A supporto e potenziamento di questi sviluppi, negli ultimi anni si sono inseriti vari pronunciamenti internazionali, tra la Convenzione Onu sui diritti delle persone con disabilità nel 2006 e la Risoluzione n. 2016/2952(RSP) del Parlamento europeo del 23 novembre 2016. Quest’ultima in particolare, significativamente, si pronuncia a favore del riconoscimento delle lingue dei segni e sulla necessità impellente di poter disporre di interpreti di lingua dei segni professionisti, formati di preferenza all’interno di percorsi universitari almeno triennali.
Esiste un crescente corpus di letteratura che esamina la formazione degli interpreti in lingua dei segni in vari paesi dell’Unione Europea e da queste ricerche, locali e nazionali, emerge piuttosto chiaramente sia la carenza cronica di interpreti di lingua dei segni qualificati, sia l’eterogeneità dei percorsi formativi e degli standard qualitativi della professione. I prossimi anni saranno pertanto cruciali nel consolidare la svolta verso la professionalizzazione della professione in tutti i paesi
dell’Unione.

Interpreters are often assessed, but rarely given diagnostic evaluations capable of guiding their professional development. This paper describes a diagnostic tool based on the belief that the answers to how interpreters improve can be found inside the interpreters. Guided by a respect and understanding for the difficulties of change, the interpreter and diagnostician engage in a collaborative process of dialogue and observation to discover how the interpreter would like to grow and outline a plan to make that growth a reality. By analyzing how the interpreter habitually divides his/her available energy to perform the various, simultaneous parts of the task, ineffective mental habits are discovered and remedies suggested. Finally, a comprehensive professional development plan designed to match the learning style of the individual interpreter is written. Each individual plan provides a framework for professional development that supports deep, lasting growth.

Interpreters are taught they have deep roots in the Deaf community, and their work began as volunteers from schools, churches, and social services. This article expands on that history to include the time before any of those systems... more

- by AnnE Leahy
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- Deaf studies, British Sign Language, Disability History, DEAF histories

—Sign language is a natural language that uses different means of expression for communication in everyday life. As compare to other sign language ISL interpretation has got less attention by researcher. This paper presents an Automatic translation system for gesture of manual alphabets in Marathi sign language. Proposed system allows the user to interact with the system in a natural way. System provides an opportunity for deaf persons to communicate with normal people without the need of an interpreter. We are going to build a systems and methods for the automatic recognition of Marathi sign language. The first step of this system is to create a database of Marathi Sign Language. The better recognition rate depends upon better segmentation of image. In every hand gesture recognition system, hand segmentation is the most crucial step. To achieve better recognition rates, efficient and robust hand segmentation and tracking algorithm included in proposed system. A large set of samples has been used to recognize 43 isolated words from the Standard Marathi sign language. In proposed system, we intend to recognize some very basic elements of sign language and to translate them to text and vice versa in Marathi language.

- by Amitkumar Shinde
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- Image Processing, Deaf studies, Pattern Recognition, Sign Language Interpreting

People who work in social justice professions typically work
with those who do not have a voice in the public square.
Historically, these groups have been children, the aged, those
poor and/or homeless, and the disabled, among others. This
paper shows that those who interpret for deaf people should be
classified as working in a social justice profession because its
definition pertains to what sign language interpreters do. Social
justice professions strive to give everyone a fair and equal
opportunity in life, just as other groups enjoy. Although deaf
people should be advocating for themselves, sign language
interpreters do this de facto, as they get bombarded with
questions regarding deaf people’s capabilities, get caught in the
culture debate, and observe as discrimination of the deaf person
abounds. This type of vicarious trauma can cause people in
social justice professions to burn out. One hundred sign
language interpreters were given a survey assessing their level
of grit (Duckworth, Peterson, Matthews, & Kelly, 2007). The
range of grit scores (1-5) was 2.33 - 4.75 (x̅ 3.7, mode 3.33).
Interpreters were also given qualitative questions regarding
what drew them to the profession and what keeps them in the
profession. Initially, only 49 got into the profession for social
justice reasons, but now 70 interpreters listed social justice as
the reason they continue to work in the profession. They are
exhibiting what is known in the profession as ‘Deaf Heart’.
Interpreters are coming alongside deaf people in order to help
level the playing field.

Este artigo tem o objetivo de explorar pesquisas que tiveram
como objeto de estudo as omissões na Interpretação Simultânea (IS), tanto nas Línguas Orais (LO) quanto nas Línguas Sinalizadas (LS), apresentando quais os conhecimentos existentes sobre este fenômeno que é intrínseco ao trabalho do intérprete profissional, contribuindo para as discussões sobre o assunto na área dos Estudos da Interpretação (EI) no Brasil e ainda oferecendo conhecimento para a formação destes profissionais.

- by Diego Barbosa
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- Translation Studies, Interpreting Studies, Interpreting, Sign Language Interpreting
- by Betsy Winston and +1
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- Mentoring, Sign Language Interpreting, Signed Language Interpreter Training

Many factors contribute to perceptions of identity: race, class, language ideology, and in the case of Deaf signers, the impact of a non-aural language, constructs of disability, and interpreters. I believe interpreters have the potential to and, if not cognizant and alert to prevent it, the power to contribute to the construction and perception of a differently gendered identity than that of the Deaf signer. I wonder if the gender of the interpreter can contribute to a more feminized identity. In this paper, I posit that during interpreted interactions sign language interpreters can and do play a role in influencing the situational perception of the identity of Deaf signers. I also suggest that the gender of interpreters and their personal linguistic repertoire has an impact upon the hearing interlocutor's perceptions of Deaf speakers as well as the potential to impact the agency of ASL signers, and others, we understand that the construction of identity through talk is an interactional process.

Studies on the state of the art of Sign Language Translation and Interpreting (SLTI) research in Brazil are scarce.The theoretical framework for this investigation was based on Metzger (2010), Napier (2010), Grbic (2007), Pereira (2010), Souza (2010) and Vasconcellos (2010), who conducted surveys on the state of the art of research on SLTI.This thesis analyzes the categories that emerge from academic theses and dissertations on SLTI published in Brazil in the period 1990-2010.Our methodology of analysis have taken into account previous studies carried out by Pereira (2010) and especially by Metzger (2010), who conducted a similar investigation in the United States context based on the categories presented by Pöchhacker (2004):subjects, methodologies and paradigms.We have applied and analyzed such categories in the Brazilian context and found an emergence of new aspects to be problematized in the course of research on SLTI.In addition, we have extracted a list of frequent (content) words from those theses and dissertations on SLTI using WordSmith Tools’WordList function.The results confirm that the hot points of research on SLTI are:characterization of the sign language interpreter’s role in the classroom; identity conflicts between “teacher/interpreter” and “interpreter”; educational pathways; working conditions; translation processes applied to literary and technical contexts. The larger interface of these studies is with the field of Education, followed by Linguistics.Finally, we have found a theoretical transition in the research on SLTI, as well as a process of consolidation and empowerment of this subarea articulated with Translation Studies.

La pratique professionnelle de l’interprétation français/langue des signes québécoise (dorénavant LSQ) existe au Québec depuis moins de 30 ans. Il s’agit d’une profession relativement jeune et plutôt marginale en ce que le Centre québécois de la déficience auditive (Centre québécois de la déficience auditive, 2004) estime à un peu moins de 300 le nombre d’interprètes visuels. Il est toutefois reconnu que certains interprètes québécois souffrent de troubles musculo-squelettiques (dorénavant TMS) (Durand, Delisle et Imbeau, 2001). Malgré ce petit nombre de travailleurs, différentes études ont tenté de cerner les facteurs de risque liés à cette profession et de mettre sur pied des programmes d’intervention (Delisle et al., 2004).
Cette recherche vise à décrire des aspects linguistiques manipulables qui sont susceptibles d’avoir une incidence sur les blessures professionnelles des interprètes en langue des signes. Compte tenu que la structure morphosyntaxique et phonologique de la LSQ permet la variation, et que cette variation est inscrite, d’un point de vue descriptif, dans la grammaire de la langue, l’objectif de cette recherche est de décrire la production linguistique d’un groupe d’interprètes (débutants et experts) en fonction de caractéristiques temporelles et biomécaniques de la tâche et en fonction des aménagements linguistiques effectués. Dans cet article, nous présenterons l’analyse comparative d’éléments phonologiques de la production d’interprètes débutants (n=5) et d’interprètes experts (n=5).

- by Jemina Napier
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- Interpreting Studies, Interpreting, Sign Language Interpreting, Bilingualism