Knowledge Exam Prep Flashcards
What is the demand for interpreters primarily driven by?
Legislative initiatives and court decisions mandating greater access for Deaf and hard of hearing individuals to employment, education and a wide range of community services.
Why are there more job opportunities for sign language interpreters in large, metropolitan areas compared to rural communities?
- More Deaf people tend to be there due to more educational, employment, and social opportunities
- There are typically more services to support the Deaf community (ie. interpreting agencies, professionals familiar with the Deaf community, etc.)
- The economic base is usually larger and more able to support the employment of Deaf people
What are the two most common types of employment for full-time interpreters?
- Staff interpreters in interpreting agencies
- Mainstreamed classrooms
What are the three types of employment for sign language interpreters?
- Staff interpreters (benefits)
- Contract interpreters (no benefits)
- Self-employed practitioner (benefits paid by the individual interpreter)
What to consider when calculating pay rates for private practitioners:
-Cost of transportation, office expenses, business clothing, purchase of personal health and malpractice insurance
What business skills must be developed?
- Writing resumes
- Writing business letters
- Basic bookkeeping and techniques for developing invoices and collecting money owed
- Schedule maintenance
- Developing appropriate business policies
What are examples of business policies?
- Call out fee VS 2 hour minimum policy
- Port to port fees
- Cancellation policy
Why isn’t private practice interpreting the best place for beginner interpreters?
- Skills must be at a high level
- Clientele must be developed
- Trust with the Deaf community must be established
What are strategies to mitigate against Repetitive Strain Injury?
- Proper warm up before working
- Regular exercise and good nutrition
- Signing habits
- Appropriate working conditions
What are ways to mitigate against emotional burnout?
- Stress management
- Support systems
Religious settings:
- Standard qualifications: none
- Special considerations: formal and frozen register, art forms
- Ethical considerations: conveying religious intent in an unbiased way, separation of interpreter role and spiritual guide and counselor
Educational settings:
- Standard qualifications: vary widely, usually graduation from an ITP, interpreter certification, Bachelor’s degree
- Working considerations: pay should include prep time and class time, adequate breaks, team interpreters
- Ethical considerations: interpreter is a member of the educational team, danger of becoming too familiar with student and their family
- Role delineation: support independence, empowerment, and integration, must not impinge of teacher’s authority
- Placement: varies
- Pay: varies depending on setting, qualifications, certification, education and multiple role job description
- Supervision, evaluation, professional development: rare
- Deaf community’s view of this setting: highly controversial
Working with a Deaf interpreter:
- Role delineation: both the DI and hearing interpreter are professional practitioners
- Special knowledge and skills: special training and practice
- Pay for services: varies, payment should be equal for both interpreters
- Opportunities for professional development: workshops, CE opportunities, skills-upgrading seminars
Medical settings:
- Role delineation: medical staff often does not understand interpreter’s role or what is needed
- Special knowledge and skills: familiar with medical terms, procedures, and protocol
- Pay for services: varies, often higher compared to other settings
- Opportunities for professional development: workshops, CE opportunities, skills-upgrading seminars
Legal settings:
- Standard qualifications: certification
- Pay for services and working conditions: higher fees are charged
- Supervision/evaluation and professional development: influenced by the size and multi-lingual/ethnic nature of the community
- Ethical concerns: familiarity with case and Deaf individuals, Deaf litigant should have one interpreter for courtroom and a separate one for client-attorney interactions, an interpreter cannot be involved in the case, separate interpreters for each side
Mental health and psychiatric settings:
- Special knowledge and skills: work closely with therapist, ensure interpreter’s presence does not shift communication or any dynamics, personal safety, evaluations and testing should be done with a relay interpreter or Deaf advocate
- Standard qualifications: certification
- Pay for services and working conditions: higher fees due to expertise
Conference settings:
- Pay for services: hourly or day rate, travel lodging and expenses may also be paid
- Supervision and evaluation: not common but may have an interpreter coordinator there
- Working conditions: long work days so requires regular breaks and teams, designated break area
Theatrical or performing arts settings:
- Standard qualifications: none
- Pay for services: varies
- Supervision and evaluation: rare
- Special considerations: attend rehearsals, translating the script, lighting is essential, working with stage manager, clothing should compliment costumes
- Placement: complex and specialized
- Working conditions: obtain scripts and music in advance, secure payment for rehearsal and prep time, lighting, enough interpreters
Employment settings:
- Standard qualifications: graduated from an ITP, preferably certification
- Special knowledge and skills: cultural adjustments, knowledge of specialized terminology, protocol, and technology
- Supervision and evaluation: rare
- Pay for services: varies
- Working conditions: usually less than optimal, must be flexible, maybe use special equipment
Social service settings:
- Standard qualifications: a mature, emotionally stable graduate of an ITP with knowledge of special terminology that might arise
- Pay for services: varies
- Supervision and evaluation: none
- Special knowledge and skills: should be familiar with the terminology used
- Working conditions: poor, often crowded and noisy and smoke-filled
Personal settings:
- Special considerations: flexibility of role, variety of emotional overlays, need for boundaries, knowledge of problem ownership, clear sense of role and responsibilities
- Working conditions: unpredictable
- Supervision and evaluation: none
- Pay: will vary, may be on barter arrangement
What distinguishes a profession?
- A profession has a special monopoly over the right to provide a particular service through licensure or certification
- A profession has a defined (limited) scope of practice and a related body of knowledge
- Professionals adhere to a clearly articulated set of values or code of ethics
What are ethics?
Ethics are behavioral standards, which is a set of principles that defines what is judged appropriate or inappropriate, right or wrong
Guidelines for professional conduct:
- Educating members of the profession regarding what is appropriate and inappropriate behaviors
- Fostering the development of professional goals and norms
- Deterring inappropriate and immoral conduct
- Disciplining offenders
- Providing information to the market regarding what is acceptable practice by members of the said profession
- Protecting the public from unethical practitioners
What are the guiding principles behind the NAD-RIDE Code of Professional Conduct?
- Confidentiality
- Linguistic and professional competence
- Impartiality
- Professional growth and development
- Ethical business practices
- The rights of participants in interpreted situations to informed choice
Steps in critical thinking and decision making:
- Write down every possible option available
- Identify all possible consequences of each action
- Collect and review all of the facts
- Review the consequences in light of these facts
- Review the options
- Rank options
- Act
- Review act
- Log what you learned for future reference
What are support groups?
A small group of professional peers committed to confidentiality, growth, and honesty
What is mentoring or twinning?
An arrangement in which a more experienced interpreter “adopts” a less experienced interpreter, showing them the ropes, introducing them to the Deaf and interpreting communities, and serving as a sounding board to review and evaluate their professional behavior, decision-making, and quality of interpretation or transliteration
What is the foundation of ethics?
Knowing yourself
Are most of our decisions based on conscious cognition or unconscious factors?
Most of our decisions are based on unconscious factors stemming from a life time of experiences
Describe early interpreters:
- They worked on a volunteer basis
- They had Deaf parents or siblings
- They were teachers of the Deaf
- They were members of the clergy
Significant Legislative Initiatives
- PL 89-333 The Vocational Rehabilitation Act of 1965: Identified sing language interpreters as a service for Deaf clients of vocational rehabilitation for the first time, marking the beginning of paid interpreting opportunities for sign language interpreters in the US
- PL 93-112 Rehab Act of 1973, Section 501 (employment practices of the fed government), Section 503 (fed contractors), Section 504 (recipients of federal assistance): Defines handicapped individuals and their rights. Mandates fully accessible rehabilitation services to members of all disability groups. This means that agencies and institutions receiving federal funds must be accessible. Post secondary institutions, businesses, criminal legal proceedings, medical settings, etc. must have sign language interpreters and other forms of accommodation
- PL 94-142 Education for All Handicapped Children Act 1975: Required that disabled children be educated in the least restrictive environment. This has led to the widespread integration of disabled children within regular classrooms and has resulted in a proliferation of interpreting jobs within elementary and secondary schools
- PL 95-539 The Court Interpreters Act of 1978: Mandates the use of only certified interpreters when non-English speaking litigants are involved in federal court
- PL 95-602 Rehabilitation Amendments of 1978: Section 101 mandates the use of personnel trained in the use of the client’s native language or mode of communication, Section 304 provides money that currently funds 12 federal interpretation education centers
- Americans with Disabilities Act 1991: Applies the concept of equal access to the private business sector. ADA requires businesses of a certain minimum size to provide interpreters to Deaf employees, TTYs, etc.
What are some differences between spoken language interpreters and sign language interpreters?
- Spoken language interpreters have a shorter history of testing, certification, and professional associations than sign language interpreters
- Spoken language interpreters mostly work L2 into L1
- Sign language interpreters mostly work L1 into L2
- Spoken language interpreters are usually paid better because their clients are viewed from a language-cultural group instead of a “handicapped” group
Where in when was RID established?
1964 at Ball State Teacher’s College
RID certification 1972-1989 for Deaf interpreters:
Reverse Skills Certificate (RSC) awarded to Deaf individuals who successfully completed the interview and the two sign-to-voice portions of the evaluation with a 75% or above
RID Certification 1972-1989 for hearing interpreters:
- Comprehensive Skills Certificate (CSC) was awarded upon successful completion of all segments at 75% or more accuracy
- Oral Interpreter Certificate: Comprehensive (OIC:C) required an interview plus four performance segments with 75% or more accuracy
- Special Certificates were awarded, including the Specialist Certificate: Legal (SC:L)and Performing Arts (SC:PA)
RID Certification 1988-2000 for hearing interpreters:
Certificate of Interpretation (CI) and Certificate of Transliteration (CT): After passing the written exam, they had 5 years to take the performance exam. There were both performance exams and you could either be certified in both, or just 1
RID Certification 2000-Present for hearing interpreters:
NAD-RID National Interpreting Certificate
-First is a written test on 10 competency areas. After passing, you have 5 years to take the performance exam which has a professionalism interview and skills exam. Successful candidates may be awarded the NIC, NIC-Advanced, or NIC-Masters
Certificate of Oral Transliteration (OTC)
- written exam in 6 content areas
- skills exam
Current specialist RID certification is the Specialist Certificate: Legal (SC:L)
RID Certification 200-Present for Deaf interpreters:
Certified Deaf Interpreter (CDI)
- First must take a written test on knowledge of Deaf interpreting and professionalism. After passing, they have 5 years to take a skills exam
- Skills exam covers: simultaneous interpreting from English to ASL, consecutive interpreting in an interaction between a Deaf and hearing person, interpreting print from English to ASL, mirroring information accurately
What is the AVLIC and where was it established?
Association of Visual Language Interpreters of Canada was established in November, 1979 in Winnipeg, Manitoba
What are the five steps of the interpreting process?
- Take in source language
- Identify deep structure meaning
- Apply contextual/schema screen
- Formulate/rehearse target language utterance
- Produce interpretation
Physical requirements for taking in source language:
- Be able to see and hear incoming utterances
- Physical and mental endurance required to focus and sustain attending skills
- Patience to wait, not to rush the process
Cognitive competence for taking in source language:
- Cloze skills in ASL and English
- Ability to extract meaning form linguistic forms quickly and discard SL “dressing”
- Ability to store, connect, and retrieve quickly
Linguistic and cultural requirements for taking in source language:
- Bilingual competence, being familiar with the range of registers in each language
- Bicultural competence, knowing how speakers accomplish various goals in culturally appropriate ways
- Proper use of turn taking, turn retaining, and reciprocal signals in each language and culture
Social competence for taking in source language:
-Social skills and cultural finesse to support effective interpersonal interactions in a variety of settings
Cognitive competence for analyzing deep structure meaning:
- Ability to think critically
- Critical listening skills in order to identify the meaning/intent
- Breaking down the information
- Disciplined reasoning
- Aware of one’s one beliefs/biases
Linguistic and cultural requirements for analyzing deep structure meaning:
- Understand speaker’s goals and utilize predictions
- Recognize euphemisms, nuances, subtleties, innuendo, insinuation, indirect suggestions, metaphors, and shades of meaning
- Ability to read culture based non verbal signals
Ways to apply contextual/schema screen:
- Cohort groups
- Schema screen
- Contextual factors
Formulating and rehearsing equivalent message requirements:
- Linguistic competence
- Cultural competence
- Linguistic and cultural adaptation
Process multi-tasking and monitoring:
- Confirming comprehension
- Asking for clarification
- Allowing movement between consecutive and simultaneous
- Checking for and correcting errors
- Verifying maintenance of interpersonal dynamics
- Working with rehearsed or read texts
- Working with uninitiated consumers
- When to use first person
Modality
English: Auditory/visual, requires use of content and functional elements to create proper rhythm
ASL: Visual/spatial, fosters use of spatial referencing and restricts use of functional elements, utterances made up of primarily content elements
Challenges: deriving meaning, dropping from SL, managing the volume of lexical units and the speed of SL delivery
Grammatical Structure
English: subject-verb-object (SVO), linear
ASL: topic prone, imbedded information allows for greater simultaneous conveyance of information
Challenges: producing target language that is grammatically correct, avoiding SLIs, conditionals in ASL must precede consequence
Time/Tense Markers
English: Verbs change forms (conjugated) to mark present, past, or future tenses
ASL: Comes early in the utterance and conjugates all following verb until a new time marker is noted
Challenges: producing target language that appropriately conveys time, recognizing time markers in ASL when working from ASL to English
Negation/Affirmation
English: Adds a word to indicate affirmation or negation, affirmation is usually imbedded in the verb, although a lexical item may be added for emphasis or clarity
ASL: Adds a NMS as the utterance is signed, formal register requires a sign after the NMS but is optional elsewhere
Challenges: incorporation of proper variations of negation and affirmation (different registers), avoidance of non-Deaf form of head shaking from side to side when making an emphatic statement (looks like negation in ASL)
Determining Meaning
English: Described as indirect due to the common use of implicit conveyance of information, requires listener to extrapolate meaning by identifying implicit and explicit units of meaning
-multiple meaning words, new lexical items can be made, generic terms, pronouns, compact lexical items
ASL: Described as direct due to the common use of ambiguous, explicit lexical items minimizing the need for participants to identify implied units of meaning
-few if any multiple meaning lexical items, maintains strong association to immediate event, specific sensory orientation, perceptual imagery
Challenges: degree of detail (mastering expansion and compression techniques as is appropriate for the direct and indirect nature of each language), use of first or third person address as appropriate for each language (including role shifting for ASL), identifying and converting implicit/ explicit information
Affect Markers
English: Generally conveyed via words with appropriate vocal inflection
ASL: Generally conveyed visually via facial markers and sign modulations, although affect signs may be signed with accompanying facial marker
Challenges: learning to work publicly with language that has qualities that are visual (may have a negative response), incorporating visual affect and informational units into spoken language
