INSIDE DOUGLAS COLLEGE / NOVEMBER 13, 1990

 

 

 

 

Breaking the Silence Barrier

eople whose first language is

Mandarin or Spanish or
French sometimes struggle to com-
municate in English.

But Deaf people are a linguis-
tic minority too, even though they
communicate without speech.

“Deaf people view themselves
as a linguistic, rather than dis-
abled, minority,” says interpreter
Dottie Rundles, who is an instruc-
tor in the Douglas College’s Visual
Language Interpreter Training pro-
gram. She says that the world is
becoming more accessible for deaf
people through a combination of

technology and interpreters, and
more interpreters are needed.

“We want people in the Visual
Language Interpreter Training pro-
gram who are interested in lan-
guage, culture, and the kind of job
that requires working between
two languages,” she says.

As services for Deaf people ex-
pand, interpreters find themselves
working in a variety of situations.
“A.A. meetings, bar mitzvahs, an-
niversaries, or awards celebra-
tions,” says Rundles. “Any place
that people go, that’s where you'll
find Deaf people.”

 

"Tis the Season

eck the halls with calculators
and spread sheets.

The accounting department is or-
ganizing the College’s staff
Christmas party. “Our department
wants to prove that accounting is not
always stuffy and boring,” says
Sharon Conboy, Faculty Payroll and
Special Projects Clerk in the Account-
ing Department.

The festivities, to be held
NOVEMBER 24, 1990 at the
Eastburn Community Centre in Bur-
naby, begin with a happy hour from
6:00 - 9:00 p.m. “There will be hors
d’oeuvres and reasonable bar prices,”
says Conboy. “Then after the hot buf-
fet dinner at 7:00 pm, we'll dance to
the tunes of our travelling D.J.”

 

To celebrate the festive season by dining and dancing with friends
and co-workers sounds enticing enough, but there’s more. All guests
have a chance to win a door prize, one of which is a travel voucher from

P. Lawson Travel.

Tickets, priced at $20 per person, are on sale now at the bookstore or

at the cashier in the Registrar’s office.

“All Douglas College staff as well as their family and friends are wel-
come,” says Conboy. “But there are only 140 tickets, so I suggest that

everyone buy early.”

“Come party with us,” says Conboy. “That's the spirit.” @

Interpreters are often privy to
a lot of personal information about
people’s lives. For example, Deaf
people sometimes need an inter-
preter when consulting a doctor or
a lawyer. “That’s why maturity is
such an important quality,” says
Rundles.

The two-year, full-time Inter-
preter Training Program at
Douglas College is designed for
people with good hearing, vision,
memory, and manual dexterity. In
order to fully understand and
translate all aspects of American
Sign Language (A.S.L.), students
must also have strong English
skills.

Students in the Interpreter
Training Program quickly realize
there are fascinating differences in
how Deaf people and hearing
people communicate. Sign lan-
guage is manual as opposed to ver-
bal. People who “sign” point, use
their bodies and facial expressions,
and become quite animated to in-
dicate grammar or topic.

“Deaf people also tend to be
more blunt. Hearing people are
much more evasive in their mean-
in g."

Rundles has interpreted
professionally for 18 years. “I’ve
done everything from janitorial,
hairdressing, and heavy duty
mechanics courses, to conferences,
weddings, and funerals, to inter-
preting in the operating room.”

But perhaps the most reward-
ing job for Rundles has been as a
labour coach and interpreter in bir-
thing situations. “It’s such an
honour to be part of something so
miraculous,” she says.

Douglas College provides the
only program in B.C. which
prepares students to work at the
interpreter level upon graduation.
For more information about the
Visual Language Interpreter Pro-
gram, call 527-5479. @

 

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