[MR] Re: Events with Sign-Interpreted Courts

[Edvard Gayer]

Scriptsit Pedro:
>My lady, Devora, is busily recruiting her current supervisor into the SCA. 
>By her account, the supervisor is a wonderful and enthusiastic sort of 
>person, who'd be a credit to us. There's just one catch. Her supervisor has 
>a severe hearing disability. While Devora can sign just a little, she 
>doen't think she can sign fast enough or effectively enough to do courts, 
>so she asked me if there were any events coming up in which the court 
>herald was going to have a sign-laguage interpreter. I said I'd ask here.

I know of no courts in Atlantia which are routinely interpreted.  The only 
courts I am familiar with are at Pennsic, and those of one Barony in Ohio 
which had a court interpreter when I played there.

The primary difficulty associated with court interpretation is the scarcity 
of qualified interpreters with experience in public settings.  While some 
hearing people *do* know ASL, very few of them have experience interpreting 
in front of large audiences.  In my experience, I have learned that there's 
a BIG difference between interpreting something privately for a deaf friend 
sitting next to me, versus being asked to stand before a large group to do 
what others generally percieved as being 'the same thing'.  Belive me, 
public interpreting is very much different, and is much, much more 
difficult. And setting aside the technical differences between private and 
public interpretation, there are also matters of "stage fright" that have 
been known to overwhelm even those gentles who routinely stand in the public 
eye.  You're a herald, you know what I'm talking about.  :)

A secondary difficulty, which can also prove to be formidable, is that the 
SCA has a unique vocabulary which does not translate easily into "standard" 
ASL.  Heaven forbid that you might be asked to interpret a Court Herald who 
is giving an award to "Ozymandus Thorkelsson, Exchequer of Spiaggia 
Levantina" if you don't know the proper signs!!  :)  There have been 
attempts to standardize much of the uniqueness of our SCA-specific language 
into ASL, and I know of at least one source which has documented name-signs 
for most of the Baronies of Atlantia, but with the very small number of 
interpreters in our Kingdom, combined with the even smaller number of deaf 
or hearing-impaired people who would benefit from this, there has not been a 
great deal of incentive to complete the work.

To address your specific question, I can offer the following suggestion.  If 
Devora is comfortable interpreting court privately for her friend, I would 
suggest that she do that.  To help her with the vocabulary issue, I have 
some materials that she might benefit from having which provides an attempt 
at standardization of SCADian terms and phrases into ASL.  Lastly, as I have 
some personal hands-on experience (pardon the pun) with this issue, and I 
would be willing to work with her to try to share some of what I already 
know with her.  (I used to date a deaf woman, and was only 6 hours short of 
completing my degree in Manual Communication before moving here from Ohio in 
'96.  I also routinely interpreted church services, and was backup for our 
Baronial Court interpreter).

If I can be of any help to you, please do not hesitate to inquire.

Your friend,
-Vard
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