Being an interpreter

The thing is that I'm not an interpreter, I'm barely a conversation partner. But when someone deaf needs help communicating with a hearing person, I guess ya take what you can get. Personally, I think it would be easier to use pen and paper than try to talk through me. Nevertheless, a couple times this week I found myself interpreting. One was just interpreting a quick Q&A conversation at Scouts. That was hard because the vocab was more than I knew. But it was easy because I wasn't involved in the conversation, I was just the middle person.

The other time I found myself interpreting was when my friend in the Stake Primary presidency visited our Primary. After Primary was over, she came up and wanted to tell our presidency how much she enjoyed visiting and what a great Primary we have. And I suddenly realized that it was my responsibility to facilitate that conversation.

I actually have experience as an interpreter for English-Tagalog. That works a little differently because each party has to say something, then wait as it's interpreted. In ASL, you can interpret simultaneously pretty easily, so it almost feels like you're having a natural conversation. Except that the deaf person can't look at the person talking to them, they have to look at the interpreter. People always talk a little weird because of it. Maybe if I was more comfortable being turned to as an interpreter, I would just jump in with a little introduction about just talking normally, like the interpreter isn't even there. And then people would feel less uncertain about how to talk to a deaf person, and life would be easier. Of course, having a competent interpreter would make life WAAAAAYYYY easier :) I didn't really think of this when I started learning ASL. I just thought it would be nice to be able to tell my kids to sit down and behave during church without bothering people. Then I thought it would be nice to be able to make new friends. Now I realize that I also want my new friends and old friends to be able to talk, and that is my burden and blessing to facilitate. I can't avoid it because I'm not good enough. But I do want to learn how to help people feel comfortable talking.