Everybody's signing about it...

[shmeep]

dogma said:

.i work in a large hospital ( about 500 beds, 1800 employees ) and there are no "official" interpreters
we have employees on the list that can interpret polish, albanian, spanish,, etc,, and there are a few that sign,, if no one is available at the hosp when we need them, then we try to call them in,,

It makes sense that a hospital, after failing to secure an interpreter, would fall back on an employee who knows the language. I'm sure it happens all the time. This isn't what happened here. Ray said, "Where's our Sign Language Interpreter?" and Jerry indicated that it was him and that he was trilingual and no one even mentioned trying to bring in a professional after that. The way that was written made it seem as if Jerry was officially on call in that capacity (and trust me, he had no business interpreting for anyone) and that that was enough. Ray seemed to know there should have been an interpreter and even knew to ask for one specifically, but Jerry wasn't an interpreter. He was barely a signer. That was very sloppy and contrived on the part of the writers.

Depending on the area, there may or may not be an interpreter nearby. In the DC area most of the hospitals have staff interpreters at the site because of the huge Deaf population. In other cities, hospitals are at least in close contact with interpreting agencies and can get someone there in a fairly short period of time. I know that Lifesigns in Los Angeles rotates interpreters who are "on call" so someone is available to drop everything and go to a hospital at a moment's notice. With the emergence of Video Remote Interpreting, even more isolated communities can now get almost instant access to a professional interpreter via a webcam and interpretation can take place in that way. If the writers on the show had even said something about the interpreter not being available or it taking too long for one to get there and then if they had decided to settle for Jerry's meager skills (making it clear they knew how bad he was), that would have made me a lot happier. Passing him off as a signer? Not a good idea. Come on. The least they could have done was to have said he had Deaf parents or something--and then forced the actor to practice until that seemed plausible.

His sign for hope? Looked like giant spiders falling from the sky. He was wiggling his fingers independantly when they should have been together. That hurt my brain.

[mlm828]

Thanks for weighing in on this discussion, shmeep. I was wondering how skilled an interpreter "Jerry" was, and you answered that question. I, too, noticed that he was saying, "he says," when interpreting. Thanks to you, I knew that was not the correct way of doing things.

I couldn't believe the censors let the middle finger salute be shown, but I'm glad they did -- the scene would not have been the same without it. I'm also glad the character didn't let the cops off the hook.

I was also wondering about the reaction among Deaf persons to the part of the story involving the Deaf character being roughed up and treated as a suspect by the cops because of their inability to communicate with him.

[shmeep]

mlm828 said:

I was also wondering about the reaction among Deaf persons to the part of the story involving the Deaf character being roughed up and treated as a suspect by the cops because of their inability to communicate with him.

I don't know about the reaction in general, but I do know that type of thing happens to Deaf people all the time and was, I thought, very well done. In California, I have friends who were pulled over for having signed conversations in their cars because the police suspected they were making gang signs.

On the other hand, a lot of Deaf people take advantage of their deafness and act helpless while being pulled over because they want to get out of a ticket. There's a famous story in the Deaf community about a Deaf man who gets pulled over, plays his "Poor me I'm Deaf" hand to the cop and then--to his dismay--is answered in perfect ASL because the cop is a CODA (child of deaf adults) and has absolutely no sympathy for him.

[bjobsessed]

admin said:

I liked that the Deaf guy had a line with the female character that wasn't interpreted. For anyone who is interested, he said, "I'm glad you're alive. I was so scared." She just replied by signing, "I'm sorry."

Thanks Shmeep for telling us that. I knew "I'm sorry," but not the other line.

And thank you for enlighnening some of us a bit with your other comments. It was obvious to me that Jerry didn't really know how to sign. Now that you mention it, any real interpreter I've seen, doesn't say, "He says...She says..." I never gave that much thought at the time.