I have been posting like crazy lately so I will keep this
post short.
On our travels through Disney, we met another interpreter.
She didn't introduce herself, which is standard fare when an interpreter meets
a new deaf person they are interpreting for, which immidietly didn't bode well.
She interpreted three of the shows we saw, two of them co- working with Brian
and one on her own. Literally no introductions but we already knew Brian
because he interpreted on the Jungle Cruise back in Magic Kingdom. They did not
work well as a team, Brian as usual, was engaging, animated and a beautiful
signer, personifying the Beast in 'Beauty And The Beast' perfectly. This other
lady was not a fantastic signer and was not well rehearsed, she did not mix
well with Brian and this was clear that there was no friendship between them.
At one point, they portrayed the actors dancing which was just cringey to
watch: she stepped on his toe, they spoke during the dance and both looked
awkward beyond words. There were a lot of actors during this show and the
blonde woman (as she will hereby be known) did the majority of the role shift
between characters, swapping between the characters of Lumiere, Cogsworth and
Mrs Pots. To do this, she took on different poses when she was not using her
hands. The result was something like a weird version of 'I'm a little teapot'.
It didn't work, she didn't use her whole body to show the different characters
like Brian did, she didn't sign with different mannerisms or characteristics,
it was flat and dull. She didn't have a specific pose for Chip, so the woman
handled his dialogue by saying 'Chip just asked me' when she was portraying Mrs
Potts, which was not true to the action onstage. It was lazy work, she choose
to simplify the characters to make less work for herself. Very unprofessional.
The interpreted live action show of Frozen was confusing,
the woman had very strange lip pattern meaning that the dialogue got skewed.
She tried to mouth along the words to Frozen whilst signing something
completely different, which was especially confusing. There were a lot of puns
in this show, which again didn't quite work and because it took longer to
explain them, the interpreters were lagging behind and struggling to keep up
with the fast paced jokes. The blonde woman didn't have any facial expression
or any noticeable acting skills so the jokes fell even flatter but she didn't
even try to make the jokes accessible. The deaf members of the audience sat
stumped or missed out on the punch line.
The next show was a Indiana Jones themed stunt show and this
poor woman was left on her own to interpret the whole thing, which she
definitely shouldn't have been. Her signing was peppered with mistakes and she
missed out A LOT of information, she couldn't quite pick up the names of the
volunteers when they went up on stage and froze before finger spelling. What
was worse, she was half way through interpreting when the woman presenter
cracked a joke, before relaying the information to the deaf watchers, the
interpreter giggled. This is highly unprofessional, the interpreters one and
only job at this point is to be a tool for the deaf people to use to access
information, they do not have an opinion or emotions. Of course they do,
they're human beings but at that point in time, their one job is to relay
information, that is what they are paid to do. The woman then proceeded to give
a quick summary of the joke which wasn't funny to try and cover her mistake. I
have been in her frenzied position where the information is coming at you thick
and fast and your struggling to keep up, when you're fighting a losing battle
and your hands turn to bricks. I sympathise with her but I do not believe,
after seeing the standard of the other interpreters that she shouldn't have
been hired.
So anyway, enough ranting.
Disney was a day of firsts for a lot of reasons and this was
the first time both me and Alison came across reflective captioning, which
isn't as space age as it sounds. Both of us are Star War nerds and we walked
into the theatre where they were showing a short movie on the legacy of Star
Wars and loaded up the devil machine. Yet again, it didn't work, so I sat
through the movie learning about the wonders of Star Wars whilst Alison looked
at some nice pictures of people talking. At the end, I noticed a weird screen
at the back of a room with backwards writing on it and thought 'Huh. That's
weird.' but then again Disney World was full of weird space age things. I then
noticed the word 'Reflective Captioning' written backwards underneath. I nudged
Alison thinking she would know what it was but she didn't so I went and asked
an attendant, who politely explained that it was for people who couldn't hear
to access the speech. Well, that was news to us. Half an hour later, after
fangirling over Star Wars memorabilia, we went back and watched it again and
this time asked for the captioning. The attendant had a slight panic, asked
some people to move and then handed Alison what looked like book stand with a
plastic screen attached to it . We attracted a few weird stares but that was
okay, kinda used to that. The stand had a stem that you could twist so you
could see the captions reflected onto the plastic screen. Clever and hurrah! No
devil machine! The only downside was that you had to look from plastic screen
to the actual movie, so missed a few bits and pieces. Deaf people should have
been born with two sets of eyes.
Later that night, we set out to meet some members of the
Deaf community in Orlando, who we were put in contact with through a friend in
Miami. We met two deaf signers who were both very interested in learning more
about BSL signs and finger spelling. It makes me feel a bit better to see
fluent ASL signers struggle with an alphabet I can produce. I can tell that my
ASL is improving because I understood more and was able to produce signs
clearer, my finger spelling however stayed at a stubborn NOPE whenever someone
finger spelt at me. There were also two interpreting students there who we
chatted to and a learnt a few new signs from, such as 'champ', which is not a
thing in England but means awesome or cool. I also learnt a very old and
slightly racist sign for England. We had food, chatted about random things,
swapped signs and left.
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