A sign language interpreter who appeared on a televised broadcast of the Hurricane Irma emergency newsflash in America has been branded ‘fake’ and ‘useless’, after many Deaf viewers struggled to understand his translation.
Watch him at work in the video below, with subtitles revealing what he is signing added by a YouTube user:
Hurricane Irma has been devastating the East Coast of America, causing flooding and storm damage on a large scale as it travels northwards.
News sites and channels are constantly releasing updates, emergency warnings and information, which are often accompanied by live American Sign Language (ASL) interpretation.
Unfortunately, in scenes that are similar to those at Nelson Mandela’s funeral back in 2013 , many Deaf viewers reported not being able to understand the interpreter, who appeared tentative and unsure as he signed.
He is said to have fingerspelled SHALTERS instead of signing ‘shelter’, called the hurricane ‘NMA’ and used seemingly random phrases such as “mix a pray” and “nice that offence monster”.
There have been suggestions (unconfirmed) that the man is not a qualified interpreter, but is instead someone working for the emergency services who has a deaf relative.
In better news, an interpreter signing on another Hurricane Irma report has received a positive response, as reported in the Daily Mail here, (although as this site’s editor Charlie Swinbourne wrote in 2015, interpreters going viral during natural disasters may not be going viral for the right reasons).
By Emily Howlett.
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KWills
September 11, 2017
Not another one! Such important information, too. I really hope that there were subtitles for this broadcast as well as this ‘interpreter’.
Although, to be fair to him, he looks like he’s been shoved in front of the camera at the last minute. As if someone in the room had said, ‘You got a cousin knows ASL, right? Go on, get up there and do the sign thing.’ Of course, he should have refused, but that can be hard to do under pressure. It looks like there’s a lot of home-sign in there, as well as a lot of blank, slightly panicked stares.
Nems
September 11, 2017
Check out the great guy who did all the public safety announcements in Houston just a could of weeks ago…he is also trilingual – continuing to interpret into ASL when the announcement switches into Spanish (confirmed by an American Deaf friend). https://www.facebook.com/houstonmayor/videos/10155317133217535/?hc_ref=ARRT3sNCph2hkfvR7fS99uc9pM1l2sfJcZiAfFklb32_zHfEP2Rl1uHwtwCQaVY_uHQ&pnref=story
Hartmut Teuber
September 16, 2017
AS KWIlls in his comment above suspects, this is what happened in Manatee County, covering the Tampa area. Below is a sign vlog from Deaf Moth (deaf-run news service) that gives more information as to how this happened. Poor Marshall Greene, the interpreter in the yellow shirt, was actually pressed into service according to several sources. His only fault is that he did not persist in refusing the role. The link below explains that the county and municipal public officials do know how to obtain a certified interpreter and has a history of contacting a reputable interpreting agency. The video includes a transcript in English for those not knowing ASL.
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=744741039061132&id=247882748746966
My thought: Marshall under pressure (perhaps he is an employee of the county, as he had been mentioned in a local news story of being a life guard using sign language; perhaps under threat of doing it or else), did it to show them officials being assholes after receiving a lot of negative flack, to teach them a lesson.
The problem as I see it, the governmental authorities in Manatee County had not developed adequate infrastructure resources to obtain a qualified interpreter in any governmental bulletins on the TV at the last notice. There may not be any mention in the emergency management manuals about getting public information to the ASL community like other counties apparently did. We have relied too much on the Deaf awareness by a few key individuals in the emergency management system.
One good thing from the video is that the “interpreter” stood next to the lectern inside the camera field and the camera stayed fixed to the lectern.