IW 106: Interview Dr Carol Patrie Part 2: Fingerspelling - Myths VS Truth

It's English! No. It's Latin! No. It's sign language! ...sigh...

Today we hear the fascinating CODA journey that took Dr Carol Patrie from only fingerspelling when in public to an accomplished interpreter and researcher who has cleared up the myths associated with this aspect of our interpreting practice. Knowing and understanding what fingerspelling really is, is half the battle to improvement of recognition.

Transcript

IW 106: Interview Dr Carol Patrie Part 2: Fingerspelling – Myths VS Truth

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[ROCK INTRO MUSIC STARTS]

00:00:02 Tim

Good morning, good evening, good afternoon. Wherever you are, this is the Interpreter's Workshop podcast. I'm Tim Curry, your host. Here we talk everything sign language interpreting the ins, the outs, the ups, the downs, the sideways of interpreting. If you're a student, a new interpreter, experienced interpreter, this is the place for you. If you want to know more, go tointerpretersworkshop.com.

00:00:28 Tim

Let's start talking... interpreting.

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00:00:34 Tim

And now the quote of the day by John Geddes, Scottish author.

00:00:40 Tim

“Myths aren't fairy tales or legends. They're an honest attempt to explain mysteries.”

00:00:49 Tim

In our profession, it is very hard to explain the interpreting process, or perhaps what the brain is doing while we are interpreting.

00:00:59 Tim

We have tried many theories, many diagrams, lists of things that we need to consider about the discourse about the cultures involved, the languages involved, the use of languages involved, the whole context. But still we have misunderstandings and difficulty to comprehend exactly what it is we do.

00:01:21 Tim

We can see the product. We can talk about the process. We can break it down into short parts, all with the goal to improve the services that we give to our communities.

00:01:34 Tim

But sometimes there are misunderstandings that turn into beliefs that we think of as truth. One of them we will talk about today, finger spelling, visually spelling a word from the printed spoken language.

00:01:50 Tim

Today, luckily we have one of the top researchers and experts in this field that understands what we call finger spelling.

00:02:00 Tim

Her perspectives and her research have given us a lot to help us step even higher in our understanding of this one myth, mystery, this one attempt to improve our skills.

00:02:15 Tim

Dr Carol Patrie, again we speak with her, learn how she uses that history of her life to influence the path of her research.

00:02:29 Tim

Let's dispel some myths and learn deeper the meanings of this one skill that we like to work on. Well, maybe not like, but need to work on.

00:02:42 Tim

Let's get started.

[SHORT TRANSITION MUSIC]

00:02:48 Tim

Last week, we left off with a cliffhanger. Why Carol could only use finger spelling when communicating with her father in public. Let's go back in the story just a little bit to remind you where we are. Here we go.

00:03:04 Tim

Do you think your father knew that you had filtered something out?

00:03:07 Carol

I don't.

00:03:09 Tim

Yeah.

00:03:10 Carol

No, because they, they trusted me completely… [Tim: mhmm]

00:03:15 Carol

…as, as an interpreter or as a broker, they trusted me. [Tim: yeah] And oh, by the way, this was all in finger spelling.

00:03:23 Tim

Oh, why's that?

00:03:24 Carol

Oh, because we were at the Rochester School for the Deaf. They did not allow any signing at all.

00:03:32 Carol

So everything, everything, everything had to be finger spelled, if we were on the campus or in the school building.

00:03:40 Tim

So, this is where the Rochester method comes from.

00:03:44 Carol

Yes. So, if I would go into the school building to say to my dad, you know, “Mom wants you to come home” and I use signing, he would be, you know, very anxious. “Don't sign, don't sign here.” [Tim: wow] But the interesting thing is that he did sign himself.

00:04:02 Carol

He was, he was a science teacher, [Tim: ah] and he was the only deaf teacher in the whole school at that time.

00:04:10 Tim

Oh. Wow.

00:04:12 Carol

The only deaf teacher in the school for the deaf.

00:04:15 Tim

And what year was this?

00:04:18 Carol

Oh, this would have been in…

00:04:21 Carol

…the late 40s, early 50s. [Tim: OK] So yeah, early 50s.

00:04:25 Carol

So, there was at, at a much later date after he had passed away, a woman from the University of Rochester gave a, a lecture about Dad. [Tim: yeah] And she pointed out that the people she interviewed, his former students all really loved him.

00:04:45 Carol

Because he would sign to them. So, in order to avoid getting caught, he would wait until their supervising teacher walked by the door. [Tim: mhmm]

00:04:55 Carol

They were always looking for people signing, so the supervising teacher would go by the door.

00:05:02 Carol

And then my father would close the door and step back from the line of vision. [Tim: mhmm]

00:05:08 Carol

And then sign to the students so they would understand photosynthesis.

00:05:13 Tim

Yeah, yeah.

00:05:15 Carol

And then when she came back by, he was finger spelling again. He never got caught. Had he got caught, he would have lost his job. [Tim: Wow]

00:05:24 Carol

It was that serious.

00:05:27 Tim

Hmm. And he was the only teacher who was Deaf. Goodness. And when did that change? Or has that changed?

00:05:35 Carol

Oh, I imagine it's changed now. They don't even use only finger spelling there, I don't think. [Tim: yeah]

00:05:43 Carol

I do remember that there was an additional deaf person that came on the faculty there.

00:05:50 Carol

Maybe late fifties, sixties. [Tim: mhmm] I don't know. It's very long time ago.

00:05:57 Tim

Yeah, yeah. Did they have interpreters working?

00:06:00 Carol

Oh, no. Oh, no. I don't think there was such a thing.

00:06:04 Tim

Yeah, yeah.

00:06:05 Carol

Well, they did… Sometimes they would have an assembly [Tim: mhmm] in the school auditorium.

00:06:13 Carol

And I remember seeing a woman up on-stage finger spelling… [Tim: mmm] …the whole thing.

00:06:19 Tim

Oh, my goodness.

00:06:20 Carol

And I can't remember if she was saying what another person said, or if she was just, you know, expressing her own thoughts. But I remember people standing on stage finger spelling [Tim: mmm] to the whole audience.

00:06:33 Tim

I, I'm just thinking of myself how I could see someone far down on-stage finger spelling. Yeah, I just could not imagine that. So, when was your first experience seeing interpreters?

00:06:47 Carol

Umm… [burst out laughing]

00:06:50 Carol

I guess when I looked in the mirror [Tim: Oh!] in 1968. I had two colleagues, but we were all working, so I couldn't really see them interpreting.

00:07:00 Tim

Yeah. Yeah. So, your parents did not have interpreters for their daily needs, as it were.

00:07:07 Carol

No, not other than me. Or maybe one of my brothers. [Tim: mhmm] No, no, no. Captioning, no interpreters, [Tim: mhmm] nothing.

00:07:17 Tim

Times have changed.

00:07:19 Carol

Yeah.

[SHORT TRANSITION MUSIC]

00:07:24 Tim

So how did you become a, quote, unquote, professional interpreter?

00:07:29 Carol

I was pushed.

00:07:30 Tim

OK, [chuckling] by whom?

00:07:33 Carol

It was never a career goal. Umm, by my parents. I was enrolled in a college not far from Rochester, [Tim: mhmm] and I didn't really like it there. I went there to study speech therapy, thinking that I could use sign language to help deaf children develop language. [Tim: mhmm] And I enrolled in the program, and they said, “Oh, that is definitely not happening. You need to have them speak.”

00:07:59 Tim

Mm-hmm.

00:07:59 Carol

So, I was never happy in the program. I did very well, but I wasn't happy there. So in early in the fall of…

00:08:09 Carol

…think it was my junior year. My parents drove to where I was going to school and they said, “Hey, there's this new place in Rochester. And we heard…”

00:08:20 Carol

You know, [both chuckle] ‘Deaf told me’, “they need interpreters there. [Tim: hmm] And, and they said you should call.” So, I called up Dr Forcina. Who was the man who was running NTID at the time. And I said, “Hi. I have deaf parents.” And he said, “Come to work tomorrow.”

00:08:40 Tim

Wow.

00:08:41 Carol

So that was my first interview sight unseen. [Tim: mhmm] So, I very quickly… I mean this was… The fall semester was in progress. It had already started. [Tim: I see.] So, I just packed up my things and I even, I don't remember the exact timing, but it was very quickly. I was in the classroom at NTID. [Tim: mhmm]

00:08:59 Carol

It was an… There was an opening speech, umm [slight chuckle] it’s engraved in my mind. [Tim chuckles] A man named Bill Sands, who was an ex-convict, gave a speech about his book. My Shadow Ran Fast, [Tim: mhmm] and so that was my first interpreting job and I sat in front of the…

00:09:20 Carol

I think they had maybe 16 or 18 deaf students in that first class, and I sat there, and I finger spelled everything.

00:09:28 Tim

Ohh… [laughing]

00:09:30 Carol

[chuckling] What's wrong with that? And they all looked like they had, like, “Oh, what have I gotten myself into?” They thought that all of the, you know, post-secondary education would be through finger spelling.

00:09:44 Tim

Right.

00:09:45 Carol

Because that I was the first thing they saw. [Tim: yeah] So, I knew signs in the back of my head, but we were never allowed to sign. [Tim: mhmm, mhmm]

00:09:54 Carol

You know, outside of the house. So, I relied on my colleagues. One was Sharon Neumann Solow. [Tim: mhmm]

00:10:01 Carol

Who had already had one year of professional interpreting experience in California, so she was way ahead of me. [Tim: hmm]

00:10:09 Carol

And her parents and my parents went to college together, but her parents signed all the time, so she wasn't, she wasn't raised with only finger spelling. So, I watched her.

00:10:23 Carol

I studied, you know, some sign language books by Lou Fant. I'm like, “Oh, I know that sign.” And there was one other woman that worked there.

00:10:32 Carol

And her parents used ASL. So, I watched her too. [Tim: yeah] So, I learned on the job. I had a 40-hour week of interpreting in the classroom. [Tim: mmm] And I also I took the courses that I was interpreting for.

00:10:48 Tim

Not at the same time, I guess. Or did… 

00:10:50 Carol

Yes, at the yeah. At the same time, yeah. [Tim laughing]

00:10:53 Tim

OK. And no one saw that as a problem at all, OK.

00:10:57 Carol

No, no. And then also NTID was, or RIT was made, basically, you know, male at that time. So, I also dated the, the people in the class. [both laughing] This must have been before we had a Code of Ethics or anything like that.

00:11:13 Tim

Yeah. So, this was at the time when RID was just forming and just getting going, [Carol: mhmm] right?

00:11:23 Carol

Right, right. They had their first National Convention in 1970, [Tim: mhmm] and I, you know, went to that.

00:11:32 Tim

Sure.

00:11:32 Carol

But I started working full time as an interpreter in 1968. [Tim: mhmm] And at the end of my first year, my supervisor said, “OK, great job. Now you can teach interpreting.” [Tim slightly laughs]

00:11:46 Tim

Well, that's a good jump there. Yeah. [Carol: Yeah] How did you feel when he said that?

00:11:51 Carol

Well, throughout most of my career, people have said to me, “oh, you know, do this or do that.” And I thought, “well, if they think I can do it, I must be able to do it. They must see something in me that tells them I can do it.” [Tim: mhmm]

00:12:05 Carol

So, I had already, you know, put in a year as an interpreter. I'll put that in quotes. And then my boss thinks I can teach interpreting and thought, “Well, OK, who else is there? And if they think I can, I will.”

00:12:19 Tim

Yeah, yeah. How did that go?

00:12:22 Carol

It was a lot of fun. [both laughing] It was basically a vocabulary… [Tim: yeah] session.

00:12:30 Carol

These people already I think they were CODAs.

00:12:30 Tim

Yeah.

00:12:34 Carol

So, you know, they knew how to express themselves. So, we I think we mainly did a lot of technical kind of signs and, and then we did play some audio tapes and good luck try to keep up. [Tim chuckling]

00:12:47 Tim

Yeah, I'll be back in a few minutes. I'm getting coffee. You guys keep practicing. [Carol: yeah, yeah]

00:12:53 Tim

So, he wanted you to teach interpreting. Were they starting a program for like, an associate’s degree or what was that?

00:13:01 Carol

Oh, they needed new interpreters for the incoming classes of deaf students. [Tim: sure] They needed more interpreters.

00:13:09 Tim

OK, OK. So, they just kind of create courses for it. Was this connected to federal funding?

00:13:15 Carol

NTID does receive federal funding, but they had, you know, incoming deaf students and not enough interpreters. [Tim: mhmm] So, it was the early roots of their own interpreter training program. [Tim: mhmm]

00:13:29 Carol

They later did have a four- and they still do. They have uh, an amazing program at NTID.

00:13:35 Tim

Yeah, and now the teachers have a little more experience. That's good. [both laughing]

00:13:40 Carol

Yes, doctorates and all that.

00:13:43 Tim

Ah, so now this makes more sense. Now if you started out being forced to use the Rochester method a lot, and then you said, you know what, I know how to help new interpreters and older interpreters to learn the finger spelling puzzle.

00:14:01 Tim

As it were.

00:14:01 Carol

Yes, yes, exactly.

00:14:04 Carol

I had the opportunity to teach at Gallaudet in the Associate’s program, and in you know, that program at NTID. It wasn't a program. It was just a summer class. I mean. [Tim: yeah] But I could see that, that, that reading finger spelling was a big problem for almost all interpreters. [Tim: mhmm]

00:14:22 Carol

So, when I was studying for my doctorate, my faculty committee was willing to let me study comprehension of finger spelled words because I was in a program that dealt with adult cognition, [Tim: mhmm] so, they let me, they let me run with it. [Tim: Yeah]

[ROCK TRANSITION MUSIC STARTS]

00:14:43 Tim

Let me interrupt your concentration about the history that influenced her research. But I'm happy you're enjoying the episode, which is why I'd like to ask a favor. I ask that you donate to the show. This will help me offset the expenses to create this podcast. Just go to interpretersworkshop.com/bmac. That's Buy Me A Coffee or click Support the Show in the show notes. Thank you. Now let's go back.

[ROCK TRANSITION MUSIC ENDS]

00:15:14 Tim

With my background first knowing ASL and being an interpreter in the US and then moving here, there are a lot of finger spell systems, as it were, finger spell modes. I don't know how to say it now, that use two hands, that use one hand, but you know with different shapes, hand shapes.

00:15:33 Tim

And I wonder if that's kind of a universal thing that most interpreters have trouble with finger spelling. I know even the deaf that I meet here, they say, ah.

00:15:45 Tim

I, I know ASL, I can understand it, but then they finger spell everything and I can't catch that. They could just go so fast with their finger spelling.

00:15:53 Tim

Is it because finger spelling is connected to the spoken language form written form? Does that have some type of strange connection that we can't get between our spoken language skills and our visual language skills? It's a weird bridge or chasm, maybe even… that's hard for us.

00:16:14 Tim

Does that have something to do with it?

00:16:17 Carol

That's an excellent question. It's almost like I've prompted you to say that.

00:16:21 Tim

Oh. [both laugh] So what is the answer?

00:16:24 Carol

This, this is one of the central problems for hearing people to learn recognition of finger spelled words. I, I will deal only with recognition. I, I don't have any research, or you know expertise in producing it.

00:16:40 Tim

Right.

00:16:41 Carol

So, I think the issue boils down to where is the connection. How do you describe the connection between, let's say, English and finger spelled systems as they use them in ASL?

00:16:54 Carol

There's kind of a cumbersome connection between them, but I think if people understand that it will help them a lot. So, there's a, you know, a thing in the Roman alphabet. This won't translate well to a podcast, but there's in, in the Roman alphabet there's, you know, the letter A.

00:17:14 Carol

That you could write like that.

00:17:17 Tim

Yeah, like a capital letter, A. Uh huh.

00:17:19 Carol

Capital letter A yes.

00:17:22 Carol

That's a letter from the Roman alphabet. [Tim: mhmm]

00:17:27 Carol

That's not English.

00:17:29 Tim

Yeah.

00:17:29 Carol

You can use letters from the Roman alphabet to spell words in many different languages. [Tim: mhmm, mhmm]

00:17:36 Carol

So that “A” or the printed, any printed letter is not a language, it's just an arbitrary character.

00:17:45 Tim

Mm-hmm.

00:17:46 Carol

And we happen to be using the Roman alphabet. There’s Cyrillic alphabet. You know, there are other kinds of alphabets, [Tim: right] but for now, we'll just talk about the Roman alphabet.

00:17:57 Carol

And we use those characters to spell words in English.

00:18:01 Carol

And then there's a connection because when you use the ASL handshape, that represents an A, it's removed one step farther from the Roman alphabet, so the handshape A represents the written letter A from the Roman alphabet.

00:18:21 Tim

Mm-hmm. [Carol: So…] Yeah. It's a, a symbol of a symbol.

00:18:25 Carol

It's a symbol of the symbol. Exactly. Exactly. So, if a person is finger spelling a word like A-L-L…

00:18:36 Carol

That's not English. [Tim: mhmm]

00:18:40 Carol

I think a lot of people get tripped up and they think finger spelling is English.

00:18:45 Carol

They say, “Oh, do the sentence in English.”

00:18:48 Carol

And the person finger spells.

00:18:50 Carol

But that isn't English [Tim: mhmm] because you, we can do a test. You could say…

00:18:57 Carol

You know, can you hear that?

00:18:58 Tim

Right.

00:18:59 Carol

Because you- spoken English, you could hear, and we… My co-author Bob Johnson and I have a test that we called Bob Johnson's Mother Test, [Tim chuckles] and she was a highly literate woman, native speaker of English. And so, if we went to her and said, “Hi, mom.” She'd say, “Hi.”

00:19:19 Carol

But if we went to her and finger spelled, “She’d say, you know, I don't know sign language.” So, if she's a native speaker of English and we finger spelled to her, she should be able to understand it.

00:19:32 Carol

But she doesn't, because she doesn't know those symbols.

00:19:36 Tim

Right.

00:19:37 Carol

That are done with the hand…

00:19:40 Carol

As being direct representations of a written symbol…from the Roman alphabet.

00:19:47 Carol

Which we can use to spell English. So if the ASL representation is used to spell words from English, it doesn't make them English.

00:20:01 Tim

Right, right.

00:20:02 Tim

So, it's even more difficult for us to talk about transliteration or Signing Exact “English”.

00:20:12 Carol

The confusion there arises from the same thing, and that is “that you can make your hands sign English”.

00:20:19 Carol

See this is, this is deeply woven into the profession. [Tim: yeah] That somehow if you move your hands in a certain way, you are representing English, but the best you could do would be to represent signs following English syntax. [Tim: mhmm]

00:20:36 Tim

Not the actual language, but the structure there.

00:20:39 Carol

Yeah. Yeah. And I think if you go back farther far enough and look at the origins of the Rochester method, the Rochester method is essentially an oral method. [Tim: mhmm] It's oral with finger spelling as a support. [Tim: mhmm]

00:20:54 Carol

And the idea was originally that using the Rochester method would improve the King's English. [Tim laughing]

00:21:02 Carol

You know, with the underlying notion that if you if you finger spell hard enough at a deaf person, they will learn English. [Tim laughing again]

00:21:11 Carol

So, the flaws, the flaws are very, very deep and they go back many, many years. [Tim: mhmm]

00:21:19 Carol

And it's a hard sell. It's a hard sell for me to have people understand the explanation I just gave.

00:21:27 Tim

Mm-hmm.

00:21:28 Carol

And because there are so many misconceptions people think, “Oh well, just see the shape of the word.” [Tim: mhmm]

00:21:35 Carol

Which is also a flawed notion, because ASL finger spelled word doesn't have a shape. [both laughing]

00:21:44 Carol

You know, [Tim: yeah] it's, it's evanescent. So, you produce one letter and then it disappears as you produce the next letter. So, you can't see the shape. [Tim: yeah] But because there hasn't been a lot of research on finger spelled words, the nature of finger spelling, there's been a lot of myth passed along. “Oh, my, my teacher said, “See the shape so just see the shape.”

00:22:06 Tim

Mm-hmm. Yeah. I was told that as well. Yeah.

00:22:10 Carol

You can see a movement pattern.

00:22:13 Tim

Mm-hmm.

00:22:13 Carol

But you can't see the shape of a finger spelled word.

00:22:17 Tim

Yeah.

00:22:18 Carol

And that was borrowed from the idea of outlining a printed word in English, [Tim: mhmm] which I guess they do with some kids in school. But I don't know that that really helps them to read.

00:22:23 Tim

Mm-hmm.

00:22:32 Carol

So, it, it came from there.

00:22:34 Tim

Yeah.

00:22:35 Tim

Well, it's, it's flawed because an H and a G in the ASL form does not match the H and G of the printed form.

00:22:44 Carol

Right.

00:22:45 Tim

So yeah, there's definitely inherent flaws and in that thinking, it's it just sounds like we've been trying to find some way to help with those skills and it's just not perfect.

00:22:57 Carol

Yeah. So, I feel, I feel confident in my, my explanation and my work because it's based in research.

00:23:06 Tim

Yeah.

[SHORT TRANSITION MUSIC]

[ROCK EXIT MUSIC STARTS]

00:23:12 Tim

Ah, what stories we can tell. What lives we lead. What stories we pass on from generation to generation. Knowing our own past, sharing it with others, it's a way to connect, a way, to understand what we do and who we are.

00:23:29 Tim

Learning about our history as a profession, through the eyes of a single interpreter's journey can help us understand how that generation thinks, how they perceive the profession, and why they perceive it that way. Knowing that her upbringing influenced Carol's research gives us a better insight into what that research means.

00:23:54 Tim

While finger spelling at Rochester was connected to oralism and deaf education, that background gave a positive influence to our profession by helping Carol understand and study in depth how we comprehend finger spelling, an aspect that is complicated, mysterious and has a lot of myths attached to it.

00:24:19 Tim

Now we can see it better. And now that we know that now that we have this knowledge, we can now approach improving this skill and perhaps other skills in a new light.

00:24:31 Tim

Stories we all have them from our journey from where we were to where we are. They're all different. Every interpreter is different, but it's nice to hear the similarities, the overlaps, how we are influenced by each other. It may not be directly.

00:24:49 Tim

But if we have been touched by Carol's research and by her stories today, it has changed our perspective on this one aspect of our profession of our skills, and that's a good thing. We broaden our knowledge to help see through her eyes.

00:25:07 Tim

It helps us also with understanding some of the bad habits. Some of the good habits, some of the myths and some of the truths associated with our sign language interpreting profession.

00:25:21 Tim

Next week, we continue the interview with Carol to broaden our knowledge a little bit more. Until then, keep calm, keep busting the myths of interpreting. I'll see you next week. Take care now.

[ROCK EXIT MUSIC ENDS AT 00:26:13]