#asl interpretation

interpreting at my shul specifically is on average great; it's overwhelmingly the same interpreting team at regular services and they are themselves jewish with familiarity with hebrew and the services (one of the interpreters is fully trilingual and knows hebrew well; the other is not completely trilingual but does know the liturgy well and also the culture.)

for events outside of regular services like classes or social things, it is not always the same team though and in those cases it's a bit more all-over-the-place.

we still do have a few favored other go-to interpreters to ask first in those cases and that pool is generally, while not all jewish themselves, folks who have been very conscientious to learn some culturally competent interpreting since they work with us regularly. if folks from that little pool of go-tos aren't available though then they will just get Whoever Is Available, whatever freelancers people can find or whoever an agency sends, and then it can be a real crapshoot in terms of how skilled they are at managing, how much they are considerate of jewishness at all, how much they are throwing hella xtian nonsense into the interpreting 😅

asl interpreting in the united states has in general been just deeply poisoned by a specifically xtian proselytizing history. where a lot of the roots of interpreting explicitly started out as a way to make sure us poor benighted ignoramuses could still Find Jesus. and while that's definitely not any longer why most people go into interpreting the "bring jesus to the suffering disableds" strain is still a significant minority enough to trickle into a loooot of interpreting whether or not the individual interpreter is aware of it -- like what signs they learn and language they're taught and don't bother to examine later.

so yeah it's definitely a Thing i have seen a lot! just thankfully folks on my shul's access team went out of the way to try and explicitly find jewish terps so its less frequent than it might have been. if im traveling and try to request interpretation at a different shul* its often very awkward linguistically.

hey there, I’m afraid the answer is...

I’m not a native signer or anything of the sort. As I mentioned in that post, I defer to actual native ASL speakers when I draw sign, so I’m the LAST person you should be asking for help in a translation. 

If you’re willing to go the distance and pay actual translators, I can suggest maybe googling websites that would link you to professional translators? Though from experience in the translation industry, I can’t promise it’ll be simple. Poem translation is something that’s often extremely difficult no matter what language - far more difficult that casual speech - and you’ll be looking at either a hefty price or... a rather ragged translation. 

Otherwise, if you’re not seeking a professional translation, perhaps there’s a budding ASL interpreter/translator that would like a challenge? Feel free to reply in the comments! (Though as always, I only encourage paid work, as translators/interpreters are often underpaid as is.)

I am hearing and fluent in ASL, I don’t post myself signing online because of all the known reasons why a hearing person shouldn’t - however I’m wondering if that applies to signing while I speak on a video for accessibility rather than interpreting or teaching?

This interpretation is beautiful!

An article about the problem with ASL interpreters going viral. Excerpt: 

If you're staring at an ASL interpreter instead of the play or musician he or she is interpreting for, you're not learning to sign by osmosis -- you're just staring. Watching a signer communicate and thinking you'll learn ASL along the way is sort of like walking into a library and thinking you'll absorb all the information in the books just by looking at their covers. When people tell me they recently attended a live program that had an interpreter and that they loved watching him or her perform, I ask what new vocabulary words they picked up. Invariably, the answer is none.