Interpreters channel new technology
By ERIN PEDIGO
Reporter
Lori Wrzesinski likens the little-known American Sign Language/English interpreting minor to a hidden jewel.
Standing in the laboratory that students in the minor use for projects, she had the lab assistant, Larry Umberger, demonstrate Visual Relay Service, a new technology that allows deaf people to make phone calls.
Umberger is deaf.
The technology is simple. The deaf person clicks a remote control at a TV, and an interpreter appears on the screen, asking the deaf person if he or she would like to make a call.
During the phone conversation, the interpreter signs to the deaf person, allowing the callers to converse.
“There was a shortage of interpreters before this technology,” Wrzesinski said.
Wrzesinski is director of the American Sign Language Program, and she’s also a senior lecturer.
The interpreting program was created 10 years ago, Wrzesinski said, after the lack of interpreters was acknowledged by a Texas Governor’s Committee on People with Disabilities.
The committee conducted a disabilities survey, which highlighting the need for sign-language interpreters.
After the survey’s results were released, Baylor’s goal was to lay a foundation for students to incorporate a sign language/English interpreting minor with any major, Wrzesinski said.
The minor requires students to take four levels of sign language.
When they complete a bachelor’s degree, they have the option of taking the Registration for Interpreting for the Deaf exam, created by the National Organization and Association for the Deaf.
After passing the exam, they’re able to teach and interpret for the deaf.
The first deaf education students graduated in 2004, with half of them taking and passing the exam, Wrzesinski said.
Students currently pursuing the minor work outside of the university.
As part of their degree, they’re involved in a pen pal program with deaf junior-high students at Austin’s Texas School for the Deaf.
The correspondence program uses sign and spoken language, with students sending letters as well as videotapes to the students in Austin, Wrzesinski said.
“The teachers say the students are never more motivated to read than when they get their letters,” she said.
The interpreting students also visit Austin to work and play with the children on their campus, play games and enjoy each other’s company.
The Austin high school students visit Baylor in the spring, and Wrzesinski said their favorite activity is to eat in the Penland Residence Hall cafeteria.
Wrzensinski said some sign language minors have gone beyond helping the deaf in the state of Texas.
Beth Underwood is a Mesquite senior with a American Sign Language/English Interpreting minor.
She became interested in sign language during high school and later pursued the interpreting minor with her sights set on a career.
Underwood traveled to Honduras last June to work with deaf children at a Christian school.
During her trip she said she worked with a group of deaf students to build their knowledge of deaf culture and also signing.
In Honduras, the local sign language is called Lengua de Señas Hondureñas, much like here it’s American Sign Language, Wrzesinski said,
Many sign languages across the globe have commonalities that make it easy for students of ASL to learn them, she said.
All sign languages use the concept of space, Wrzensinski said, because they are visual and not spoken,” she said.
“This makes it easier just by the virtue of the fact that they’ve been exposed to the common grammatical features among sign languages.
“If students have a foundation in sign language they are able to communicate in any sign language (because of) the use of space and directional verbs,” she said.
Wrzesinski said that many view the deaf as disabled. She said she thinks if people were to look closer into the deaf culture and perhaps consider th minor or a couple of deaf education classes they would see that the deaf are just like others in many ways, and yet they constitute a minority, too.
“They’re really like any other group that speaks a different language than the majority,” she said.
Wrzesinski said a sign language interpreting minor is beneficial for fields like nursing and social work where interpreter would allow doctors or patients to communicate easier.
http://www.baylor.edu/Lariat/news.php?action=story&story=41803
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