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You can now adjust the closed-captions on my YouTube vlogs

Announced today: YouTube’s enhancements to closed-captioning. I’m glad to hear this! I am a longtime supporter of closed-captioning. I posted my first closed-captioned video on Google Video just after they implemented closed-captioning in 2006. Now YouTube has implemented CC settings that allow viewers to adjust the font, size, color, and background of captions. Even better, YouTube is now supporting older captioning formats so that videos captioned decades ago can now be uploaded along with their original caption files. This means millions more closed-captioned videos will now be viewable on YouTube!

Here’s that first closed-captioned video I posted on Google Video— now on YouTube. I’m glad people watching the videos I caption can now adjust the look of the subtitles to their preference. Feel free to fiddle with the CC settings to make the captions look just the way you like.

Participated in an ASL Hangout on Air on Google+

Feb 28

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I just realized I never blogged this! Did this last month on Google+ to help them test their Hangout On Air technology with other people using sign language.

Posted in Performances

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Where are the sign language interpreter blogs today?

Feb 22

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I began writing this website in 1996, and when I turned it into a blog in 2006 I searched the blogosphere and I found some other ASL interpreter blogs. Back then, two of the four blogs I found were inactive, and since then, the other two have become inactive.

Today, things are different. While I have continued to publish my posts about interpreting for the deaf and various topics, other blogs have emerged and thrived. Here are four that I am aware of:

  • Filipino Deaf from the Eyes of a Hearing Person: Issues, activities, experiences and technologies about Deaf People in the Philippines. This blog has been active since March 2007. Jojo, the blogger, offers a perspective slightly different from American Sign Language interpreters’— yet there are more similarities than differences between American and Filipino interpreters for the Deaf. Well worth checking out.
  • Reflexivity: Interpretations by Stephanie Jo Kent: From critical thinking to responsible action. This is an active blog, quite scholarly, by a woman working on her PhD who is an interpreter, researcher, speaker, etc. It is an insightful and eclectic blog.
  • Street Leverage: Amplifying the Voice of the Sign Language Interpreter. I just found out about this blog last week, and I could not remember the name of it. The domain streetleverage.com doesn’t help me remember that it’s an interpreter blog, but then I suppose neither does danielgreene.com. ;-) They make up for their domain name by putting “Sign Language Interpreter” or “Sign Language Interpreting” in all of their post titles. Street Leverage has only been publishing for six months now—since August 2011—but their contributors are well-known in the sign language interpreting community, including: Anna Witter-Merithew, Dennis Cokely, Carla Mathers, Brandon Arthur, Wing Butler, and Antonio Goodwin. I have met each of these authors through work and workshops, and I know they know their stuff. Street Leverage is only about sign language interpreting, so combined with their contributors, they have both credibility and focus.
  • Thoughts from a Sign Language Interpreter. The blog’s author, Jon Barad, just informed me of his blog this morning in a comment to my post called Where are the interpreter blogs?. He started his blog in June 2011, eight months ago. So far he has six posts, well written, from a business and professional practice perspective. Definitely another blog to watch.

If you know of any other blogs, I would be happy to blog about them!

Posted in Reviews

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Update on my thesis on VL in ASL

Feb 12

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I am working on my master’s thesis on vague language (VL) in American Sign Language (ASL). As far as I know, not much has been published about vagueness in ASL and nothing has been published about “VL” in ASL aside from my article in the RID Views. For my thesis, I’m doing a literature review of what has been written about VL in world languages and vagueness in ASL— even if the topic of the publication wasn’t “vagueness” per se. After a review of the literature, I will contribute a description of at least one aspect VL in ASL. My goal is to help ASL-English interpreters recognize VL and interpret it faithfully to serve the communication goals of deaf and hearing consumers.

If you know of any literature about VL in ASL—or any type of vagueness in ASL—please leave a comment. Thanks!

Posted in Updates

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Are most ASL interpreters working in their C language?

Oct 25

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[I began writing this as a comment to C is for… – The Interpreter’s Languages (Part II), a follow-up to Learning your ABCs – The Interpreter’s Languages (Part I)— both posts from the blog The Interpreter Diaries. The comment got so long, though, I decided to make it a post on my own interpreting blog. So, here we go.]

The American Sign Language interpreting profession has a lot of catching up to do to bring it on par with foreign language interpreting international conference interpreting. I would venture to say that most ASL interpreters are working not only from but also to their “C language.” You have to understand that until the ’60s and ’70s, there was no ASL interpreting profession, and those who interpreted for the deaf were usually family, friends, or neighbors. Deaf people counted themselves lucky to get anyone to interpret for them— free of charge, no less! Unfortunately, here we are in the 2010s and deaf people still find themselves lucky to get an interpreter to provide the service even for pay.

There is a shortage of interpreters to fulfill the demand for “qualified interpreters” required by the Americans with Disabilities Act. There are very few native hearing signers. Even those with deaf parents do not all learn the language fluently; in fact, it has been seen that one child may learn ASL fluently and the other siblings will rely on that child to interpret between them and their parents. And then, even the CODAs (children of deaf adults) who are fluent in ASL are not always as fluent in all registers of the language that they would need to be to call ASL their A language. What’s more, CODAs often have English as a B language because it is their second language. (Babies are developmentally able to learn signed languages at a younger age than spoken languages, so for many CODAs, sign language is their native language.)

To make matters worse, Read the rest of this entry →

Posted in Articles

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