President Barack Obama congratulating legislators and Stevie Wonder (Photo credit: theqspeaks)

Consumer Electronics Association CEO Gary Shapiro introduces former Mass. Governor Mitt Romney (R) at CEA HQ in Arlington, VA. 5/28/2009 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Don’t let the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) and Entertainment Software Association (ESA) persuade the FCC to exempt them from closed-captioning Internet video. Read the article below and click the links to read the actual petition; then, write to the FCC to uphold the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act (CVAA) that President Obama signed into law.

Trade groups hunt for online-video exemptions from disability-access rules – FierceOnlineVideo.

Related articles

• Filing by Consumer Electronics Association in 10-213 on 03/22/2012
• Petition of the Entertainment Software Association in 10-213 on 03/21/2012

Teachers … are particularly beset by the temptation to tell what they know. … Yet no amount of information, whether of theory or fact, in itself improves insight and judgment or increases ability to act wisely.

—Charles Gragg, “Because Wisdom Can’t be Told,” 1940. In Wiggins, Grant; McTighe, Jay. Understanding by Design (Expanded Second Edition). Alexandria, VA, USA: Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development, 2005. p 227. Retrieved from http://site.ebrary.com/lib/westernoregon/Doc?id=10081770&ppg=239

Looking forward to today's #EPT on signed & spoken language interpreters b/t myself, @danielgreene & @SGInterpreting. plus.google.com/u/0/1168757966…—
  (@TerpTrans) May 27, 2012

As fate would have it, I found out right after I Tweeted and posted this that #EPT were postponing.

With deep regret, we must postpone today's Interpreters and Translators on Air. One of our guests will be unable… plus.google.com/b/103996224417…—
#EPT updates (@EPTupdates) May 27, 2012

Google Inc, 谷歌美国总部 (Photo credit: Yang and Yun’s Album)

Naomi Black at Google headquarters invited Willie King, Jared Evans, Ben Rubin, Richard Goodrow, me, (and maybe others who couldn’t make it) to a Hangout On Air so she should show JAC Cook how Google’s videoconferencing technology works. We talked about some of the plusses (no pun intended) and minuses of Google+ HOA’s (Hangouts On Air, not Homeowners’ Associations). On the plus side, you have an attractive service and you don’t have to deal with firewalls; on the minus side, it is hard to have group talks in ASL when only one signer is in a big pane and all the others are in “thumbnails” in the “filmstrip” along the bottom of the screen. We discussed ways of moderating multi-signer videoconferences, such as having people hold up their hands when they want to talk and waiting to be called upon. Naomi reminded us you can select the thumbnail of the person you want to watch in the big pane, and a few of us recommended doing away with the screen-and-filmstrip layout and going to a more equally-sized multi-pane layout (or one where you can control the size of panes). Jared Evans & Willie King work at ZVRS and they said they would like to give Google some tips on more effective multi-point videoconferencing for signed language users.

The Brady Bunch opening grid, season one (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I am glad that Google keeps seeking the opinions of the signing communities; I just hope they are willing to change the layout of Hangouts to a “Brady Bunch” grid format– or at least offer it as an alternate layout.

How about you? Does the current implementation of Google+ Hangouts work for you, or would you like to see changes made? Please leave your thoughts in comments below and/or send your feedback to Google!

Related articles

• American Sign Language (ASL) Hangout On Air, Interpreted (terptrans.com)
• Participated in an ASL Hangout on Air on Google+ (terptrans.com)
• Google+ Hangouts (edelman.com)

I think that, in general, professional conferences are great! I don’t go to them all the time—one a year on average—but I always make some valuable personal/professional connections, and I always learn more about how to be better at what I do. For example, at the Conference of Interpreter Trainers in 2010, I met Miako (Villanueva) Rankin. We happened to chat at a lunch table, and now she is one of my master’s thesis committee members. Another example: I attended a Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf regional conference in 1998 and learned some life-changing lessons about participant-presenter interactions that have stayed with me both as a participant and a presenter of workshops.

I also think it helps to find more than one reason to go to a conference. When I attended the 2006 CIT conference in San Diego, it was a chance to visit my parents and friends in the city I had moved away from two years before. When I attended other conferences, such as the National Association of Black Interpreters (NAOBI), I was there as a presenter but I reveled in the warm welcome I received even though I am not black and I loved the festive atmosphere and cross-cultural exchange.

A conference is what you make it. If you can network and make friends and/or academic/professional relationships, combine both learning and teaching, and enjoy the city you’re visiting, I think a conference can be a great boon to one’s career.

P.S. I didn’t put all these links in my comment on The Professional Interpreter; I added them here.

pictograms used by the United States National Park Service. A package containing all NPS symbols is available at the Open Icon Library (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Yesterday’s Hangout On Air on American Sign Language (ASL) and Deaf culture is now a video on YouTube, and that video is being crowdsourced for subtitles at Amara. If you’ve never heard of Amara (I hadn’t until yesterday), it is a website dedicated to crowdsourcing the captioning of videos. How it works is that anyone can embed a video on Amara, and anyone can caption it on a volunteer basis. Captioning is very time-consuming. It involves both transcription, line division, and time coding. The average rate of speech is somewhere around 5 syllables per second (Kendall, 2009, p. 145). You have to listen to a few seconds of a video, pause the video, type what you just heard, and repeat the process. The transcription has to be time-coded; i.e., the words have to be matched with the time they appear on the video, usually at about 32 characters per line^[1], so that’s time-consuming too. For these reasons, when it comes to help with closed-captioning, the more the merrier, especially because so many people make videos pro bono. This video is over 48 minutes, and of course it’s pro bono. If you would like to closed-caption a few lines of the video on Amara, please do. A little work by a lot of people will get the job done.

Footnotes

1. I don’t like to repeat statistics without sources, but 32 and 35 characters appeared often on webpages. Screen Subtitling’s white paper “Closed caption subtitling” [PDF] said “the number of characters per line or row is a set limitation” (Screen, 2008, p. 2) with no specification of the limit or reference to the authority. I searched the Internet for the “set limitation” on characters per line, and I found the same numbers repeated in different places with no traceable references. AutoCaption.com’s “Closed captioning defined” page said, “the features of traditional captioning are: … 32 characters per line” with no citation. Welstech wiki said the Department of Education required 35 characters per line, yet when I searched the US Department of Education website, I could find no such specification. CPC.com’s Closed Captioning FAQ answered the question, “What features are supported by CEA-608 closed captions for standard definition?” thus: ” […] A caption block can have up to 4 lines and up to 32 characters per line, although for accessibility reasons, it is recommended not to exceed 2 lines and 26 characters per line […].” I searched “CEA-608″ to find the source, and I found the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) CEA-608-E Standard Details page. Unfortunately, the standards are published in a printed book that costs $300, $225 for members. Can anyone quote the source of authority? If so, please leave a comment.

References

Kendall, Tyler S. (2009). Speech rate, pause, and linguistic variation: An examination through the sociolinguistic archive and analysis project (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from http://ncslaap.lib.ncsu.edu/kendall/kendall-dissertation-final.pdf.

Screen.  (July 2008). Closed caption subtitling. Retrieved from  http://www.screen.subtitling.com/downloads/Closed%20Caption%20subtitling.pdf

Related articles

• Amara/Universal Subtitles gets $1MM from Mozilla and the Knight Foundation to internationalize Web video (boingboing.net)
• You can now adjust the closed-captions on my YouTube vlogs (terptrans.com)
• Captions for all: more options for your viewing and reading pleasure (youtube-global.blogspot.com)

I participated in a Google+ Hangout On Air about American Sign Language (ASL) and Deaf culture by interpreting for Dylan, a Deaf man who shared his perspectives. I interpreted consecutively so that people could watch Dylan without voice interference; I also interpreted consecutively rather than simultaneously with the aim of providing a more accurate and natural interpretation. I interpreted for the first 15 minutes until 7pm PDT. For the rest of the Hangout, Dylan took questions in the Chat window and answered them using his voice.

P.S. I’m sorry that technical difficulties prevented me from posting the Hangout live as I said I would.

P.P.S. Dylan says that he will crowdsource this video for captioning on universalsubtitles.org. Since it is over 48 minutes long, it will take a while, so we beg your patience.

Related articles

• Hangout On Air tomorrow, Deaf-Blind party today, and master’s degree update (terptrans.com)
• Resources for learning signed languages and Deaf culture (terptrans.com)
• Should interpreters interpret signed English to spoken English word-for-word? (terptrans.com)
• Do you have to advocate for consecutive interpreting? (terptrans.com)

You can tune in to a Google+ Hangout On Air tomorrow evening, May 13, at 6:30 PDT (UTC-7) co-hosted by me and Booger Bender. The topic is ASL and Deaf culture. The idea was M Monica‘s, and I have Naomi Black to thank for recommending me. Google enabled Hangout On Air hosting to Google+ members worldwide this week, so I look forward to hosting more HOA’s in the future. Here’s a video about the new medium:

Look forward to our HOA being posted live and for perpetuity on this blog, Google+, and YouTube.

Teaching Deaf-Blind interpreting workshop next month

Husband and Wife, Communication (Photo credit: cobalt123)

RID Region V 2012 conference will be held in Honolulu, Hawaii June 13–17, and I will be teaching a workshop on Deaf-Blind interpreting on Friday, June 15, from 12:30p–3:30p. Since most of my Deaf-Blind training and experience was in San Diego from 1993–2004, I have spent a lot of time brushing up on my Deaf-Blind cultural awareness, SSP (support service provider) training, and Deaf-Blind interpreting experience. This week, I took a private SSP training, and in a few minutes, I’m off to a meeting/social of the Arizona Association of the Deaf-Blind to get more fresh experience socializing with and interpreting for (pro bono) Deaf-Blind people.

Teaching practicum this term

Spring 2012 is a very busy term for me in my master’s degree program in interpreting studies with a concentration in teaching interpreting. This quarter, I’m taking courses on teaching ethics & professional practice, interpreter education curriculum development, and practicum. For my practicum course, I’m doing practica in classes on ASL linguistics, translation, and interpreting in community settings. I barely have time to write this blog post right now, but the blog must go on, and I’m going to set aside an hour or two a week to keep blogging even if it kills me. Okay, that’s an exaggeration, but you know what I mean. It’s all about balance. Speaking of balance, my thesis is completely on hold this quarter, as I think it is for everyone in my cohort. I find it kind of odd that we focused on starting our theses last quarter, but we’ve been focused on completely different pursuits this quarter. We are the first cohort for this brand new program and I wonder, once I get to the end of the program, if I will suggest the curriculum be rearranged. For now, I’m going with the flow and trusting I will get my thesis done in the summer and fall quarters; i.e., the six months after this quarter ends. Wish me well!

Related articles

• Workshops on deaf-blind interpreting, oral transliteration at RID V in Hawaii (terptrans.com)
• Beginning a teaching practicum (terptrans.com)

ASL or other signed-spoken language interpreters: do you do consecutive interpreting & if so, take notes? Any concerns re: confidentiality?—
  (@TerpTrans) April 25, 2012

Medical interpreters: When patient is in exam room waiting for doctor, do you wait in the room or outside the door? #interpreting—
  (@TerpTrans) May 02, 2012

Oh, and another one just for fun (although I do take grammar very seriously).

Quiz: How do these differ in meaning? “He insists that no one knows about our love.” “He insists that no one know about our love.” #grammar—
Daniel Greene (@danielgreene) April 24, 2012