Seeds of Disquiet: One Deaf Woman’s Experience

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---19As I became more skilled at sign language, I switched from using oral transliterators to using sign language transliterators, or sign language interpreters as they were more commonly known. During the years I was trying to blend in, I hadn't used interpreters. Sign language interpreting was still relatively new as a profession. My first oral transliterators were a great help. They sat a couple of feet in front of me and simply repeated what was being said. When I couldn't find someone with training as an oral transliterator, I'd draft anyone whom I could speechread well, including Fred. By focusing on one person whose face was well lit and who stayed in the same place, my understanding of what was happening really improved. However, I learned quickly that husbands are not a good choice for that kind of work. It is very tiring to have to keep listening, processing information, and passing it on. The temptation to start selecting information instead of repeating it all was tremendous, especially for people doing the tedious work for free. I started to switch to sign language interpreters who were easy to speechread and who mouthed words as they signed 121 Seeds of Disquiet them. I was astonished to discover how much difference it made. I was more relaxed because, between the signs and the speechreading, I could follow conversations almost perfectly. If I didn't understand a word on the lips, the sign gave me a second chance. In fact, sign language interpreters were so liberating that when I went back to using oral interpreters, I noticed how quickly I became tired and how much more often I was baffled. I also noticed that the things I saw on the lips didn't sink in. A couple of hours or days after a meeting, what I'd seen on the lips would all come together in my brain. That was when I wanted to kick myself for not asking more questions at the meetings. The biggest revelation occurred on those occasions when I went to meetings with no interpreters at all. I could barely understand a thing. I was beginning to realize that I had been kidding myself for years. And I was appalled at how much I had missed. The more I served on boards and commissions, the more skills I learned for surviving meetings. I got better at telling people what would help me be a good participant. Still, it was tricky. I had a habit of cutting off speakers, not because I was rude but because I couldn't always figure out when to jump in on a discussion. My interpreters repeated what they heard, and they were always a sentence or two behind the last speaker. I tried to find out who was talking and watch for that person to finish, but sometimes another person jumped in before I could. I saw plenty of meetings deteriorate into chaos as people cut in on each other because they didn't ask for recognition before speaking. I became familiar with the wild-eyed look interpreters wore when several people talked at once, and I would watch them try to decide which speaker to interpret. Most of them confessed that they chose to interpret the person talking the loudest. 122 Seeds of Disquiet After I had used my first professionally trained interpreters , I was spoiled forever. Pat Isaacs was a jewel. One of the first times I used her, we arrived at a social event, and she gave me a choice I'd never had before. Without being asked, she worked rapid-fire, interpreting snatches of several conversations so that I could decide which one I wanted to join. Later, at a more formal meeting, I saw one hand dart over her head, shaped in the sign that signifies an airplane. While she made the sign, she kept interpreting the speaker's conversation with her other hand. Because the airplane sign had nothing to do with the context of what she'd been signing, it caught me off balance. The third time she used the airplane sign, comprehension dawned. Our conference room was located next to a naval air base. Pat was letting me know when planes passing overhead drowned out the speaker's voice. Ellen Trimble was another interpreter who won my respect for "above-and-beyond" performance. I barely knew her when she was called...