Translation, Sociolinguistic, and Consumer Issues in Interpreting

3. Initial Observations on Code-Switching in the Voice Interpretations of Two Filipino Interpreters

71 Initial Observations on Code-Switching in the Voice Interpretations of Two Filipino Interpreters Liza B. Martinez The Republic of the Philippines is an archipelago of more than seven thousand islands located in Southeast Asia. It lies at the western edge of the Pacific Ocean, south of Taiwan, east of Viet Nam, and north of Indonesia. The major islands are Luzon in the north, Mindanao in the south, and the Visayan island group in between. The country is culturally diverse, with numerous languages and dialects belonging to the Austronesian family. Ninety percent of the inhabitants speak one of the following : Cebuano, Tagalog, Ilocano, Hiligaynon, Bicol, Waray, Kapampangan, and Pangasinan. The language policy of the Philippines is rooted in three constitutional milestones. Spanish was once widely spoken because the country was under Spanish rule for more than three centuries. Thus, the 1935 constitution identified both Spanish and English as the official languages. Today Spanish is rarely used except in areas of the cities of Zamboanga and Cavite. In 1973 the constitution mandated the continuation of Pilipino and English as the official languages. In addition, it decreed that “the National Assembly shall take steps toward the development and formal adoption of a common national language to be known as Filipino ; this language is to be composed of the existing languages of the Philippines” (González, 1981, p. 51). In 1987 Filipino was adopted as the national language (University of the Philippines, 2004, p. xi). This historical odyssey is evident in the continuing vigorous debate over bilingualism and language policy and the nature of the Pilipino and Filipino lexicon, particularly as they draw from Tagalog and other Philippine languages (Constantino, 2005; Bautista, 1999a). Domains such as government, media, commerce, education, and science and technology continue to reflect the strong influence of English (González, 1981). The lingua franca is characterized by a code-switching variety, Taglish (from Tagalog and English) (Sibayan, 1991). 72 : l i z a b . m a r t i n e z LANGUAGE SITUATION OF THE FILIPINO DEAF COMMUNITY Recent milestone studies on the visual-spatial language of the Filipino Deaf community (i.e., Filipino Sign Language, or FSL) have been initiated by Filipinos themselves. In the seventies and eighties, publications by American writers drew largely from American Sign Language and Initial Observations on Code-Switching : 73 artificial sign systems to disseminate highly prescriptive material (e.g., Shaneyfelt, 1979). The pioneering research of Martinez on linguistic structure and sociolinguistics (Martinez, 1993, 1994, 1995a, 1995b, 1996) comprise the earliest descriptive works on Filipino Sign Language. To date, the most comprehensive linguistics reference is An Introduction to Filipino Sign Language, for which Martinez was the writer and primary contributor (Philippine Deaf Resource Center and Philippine Federation of the Deaf, 2004). This four-volume publication presents an overview of sign linguistics as a discipline in the context of the phonology, morphology, and discourse characteristics of FSL. It also documents traditional and emerging signs (in information technology and mobile phone communications) and tackles the issues of Deaf culture, education, signed language instruction and interpreting, and language policy. The current project of the Philippine Federation of the Deaf—Practical Dictionaries for Asian-Pacific Sign Languages—has already yielded “Filipino Sign Language: A Compilation of Signs from Regions of the Philippines (Part 1),” which documents regional variation and the history of the use of signed language in ten regions of the country. The Part 2 publication of the project is forthcoming in 2007 and includes lexicostatistical findings proposing regional varieties of FSL. It also demonstrates the strong linguistic pressure that American Sign Language has had on FSL and its resulting endangering presence on the latter. This project has produced a core group of nine Deaf linguistics and field researchers in the federation, trained by sign linguists Martinez and James Woodward (the latter is currently based in Viet Nam) and Deaf sign linguist Yutaka Osugi of the World Federation of the Deaf and the Japan Institute for Sign Language Studies. Recent papers presented at the Ninth Philippine Linguistics Conference covered several topics on FSL in a special plenary: phonology and regional variation (Apurado & Agravante, 2006), language contact and lexicalization (Puson & Siloterio, 2006), early signed language history (Abat & Martinez, 2006), education (Bustos & Tanjusay, 2006), language processing and instruction (Tiongson, 2006), and legal interpreting (Martinez, 2006a). Reports on the National Sign Language Committee (Andrada & Domingo, 2006) and the Dictionaries Project (Corpuz, 2006) were also included. The...