Course Description
This practical course provides opportunities to build and enhance ASL-English interpreting skills during simulated practice in the classroom and while doing volunteer interpreting in the community. Students will gain versatility in meeting the needs of Deaf, hard of hearing, and Deafblind consumers across a spectrum of varied language use. The primary language of instruction will be ASL. The classes in May and June will be augmented by ongoing volunteering in the summer and a one-week practical learning experience at a Deafblind camp in August.
Course Content
Spectrum of (ASL) language use in the Deaf, hard of hearing, Deafblind community:
- Varieties of English-influenced Contact Sign
- Close-up ASL and/or hand-over-hand tracking
- Tactile ASL
- Pro-tactile signals
- Hand-to-hand fingerspelling with adapted British manual alphabet
Power and responsibility in the roles of interpreter and intervenor:
- Duties of an intervenor compared to those of an interpreter
- Ethical challenges in maintaining appropriate boundaries
- Social variables that impact meaning-making
- Awareness of privilege, intersecting identities, allyship, one’s own positionality and bias
Ongoing skill enhancement for the steps and sub-processes in interpretation:
- Predicting what to expect from the discourse
- Concentrating and attending to source message
- Representing meaning, dropping source language form
- Planning to express meaning using target language form
- Producing a clear and cohesive target message
- Monitoring and critiquing one’s own process and results
- Strategies for managing the time constraints of simultaneous interpreting
- Strategies for using consecutive interpreting and interaction management
- Criteria for opting between simultaneous and consecutive mode
- Strategies for effective co-interpreting as a team
Analysis and assessment of interpretation:
- Features of a successful interpretation
- Think Aloud Protocol (TAP) as a learning tool
- Demand-Control framework as a learning tool
- Peer feedback and shared analysis
- Consumer feedback
- Self-reflection and identification of focus areas/goals for one’s own development
Professional demeanour and interaction, including:
- Clear, respectful, effective interpersonal communication
- Punctuality, effort, enthusiasm
- Patience with self, others, and circumstances
- Discretion, diplomacy, confidentiality
- Working collaboratively with peers, consumers, teachers, and others
Means of Assessment
Assessment will be in accordance with the Douglas College Evaluation Policy. Evaluation will be based on a combination of individual and group work, and at the instructor’s discretion may include presentations, written assignments, papers, quizzes and/or exams.
A typical distribution of graded assignments follows:
- Interpreting Assignments: 30%
- Written Analyses: 15%
- Self-reflections and Goal-setting: 25%
- Quiz 20%
- Volunteer Interpreting Log: 10%
This is a letter graded course.
Learning Outcomes
Upon successful completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Use preparatory materials and schema of the local Deaf, hard of hearing, Deafblind community to predict and prepare for an interpretation task
- Engage with consumers to effectively determine appropriate target language variety
- Describe the differences between acting as an interpreter or as an intervenor
- Produce interpretations that meet the goals of the particular speakers/signers/settings
- Communicate in a variety of close-up and/or tactile ways with people who are Deafblind
- Critically evaluate the relative success/effectiveness of an interpretation
- Engage with consumers to seek and incorporate their feedback
- Participate in theoretical discussions and reflective seminars conducted in ASL
- Reflect on one’s own interpreting skills and identify focus areas for ongoing development
Textbook Materials
A list of required and optional textbooks and materials is provided for students at the beginning of each semester.