Dagy recently had the pleasure of being a mentor to young interpreters at the 3rd International
Conference on Family-Centered Early Intervention for Children who are Deaf or
Hard of Hearing in Bad Ischl/Austria. Following an initiative by the president
of the Austrian Interpreters’ and Translators’ Association UNIVERSITAS Austria,
Alexandra Jantscher-Karlhuber, the conference organizers agreed to give recent
interpreting graduates who are part of the UNIVERSITAS Austria mentoring
program a chance to show their skills, assisted by a total of four mentors who
would take over when things called for an experienced interpreter, which
happened considerably less often than you would think. Here's Dagy's report from this event.
The
conference was a fascinating experience for those of us who like myself had
never had any contact with the deaf community. What struck me was the excellent
organization, the fact that dozens of speakers provided their PowerPoint
presentations weeks (!) in advance and the general great ambience among
conference attendants.
The organization was quite a challenge from the technical side, catered
to everybody’s communication needs, and included a large array of language
professionals showing their skills, ranging from sign language interpreters for
as many as five different national sign languages to spoken language
interpreters from English to German and vice versa as well as colleagues doing
the captioning for speeches delivered in spoken language (provided for those
who are hard of hearing and don’t understand sign language).
Our delegation included a total of 17 people who handled all kinds of
different interpreting needs, including keynote speeches delivered in American
sign language and interpreted into spoken English and from there into German. For
the presentations delivered in spoken English, our booth was a relais meaning that the Austrian sign
language interpreters used the German interpretation to provide theirs. This
called for very exact interpreting, and the mentees did a great job at that.
As a mentor to these recent interpreting graduates, I was deeply impressed
by their skills and dedication, both prior to the conference and during these
three days. They ploughed through countless presentations to create glossaries
on subjects ranging from a documentary about deaf role models in Kenya,
traditional family structures and their impact on the health system in New
Zealand, and the psychological aspects of decision-making processes by parents
with children who are deaf or hard of hearing, to name just a few. The
conference also included the typical frustrating experiences (which seemed to
annoy me more than the mentees) such as presentation delivered at breakneck
speed by a South African researcher, highly intangible subject matters and
hard-to-understand accents. My fellow interpreters soldiered through it all.
One of them, after a particularly challenging speech that left even the mentor
exhausted, still said: “Interpreting is the best job in the universe.” Hearing her say that affirmed my belief that she has indeed chosen the right career path. Mentees with such passion and excellent skills assure me that the future of interpreting is in great hands.
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