1. DEAF-WORLD is a compound ASL sign with no concise equivalent in written English. Traditionally authors have transcribed “...signs from signed languages with English glosses (approximate translation equivalents) in small capital letters. The dash in DEAF-WORLD indicates that this is a compound sign....” (Lane, Hoffmeister, Bahan, 1996, ix).
1. In recent years, decades of sexual abuse in residential schools for the deaf have been reported in states throughout the country. Many of these accounts came from victims who are currently deaf adults. They stated they had spent many hours telling the adults, but it fell on “deaf ears” in spite of having been very detailed and graphic descriptions of the experiences. In addition, alumni of these schools also admitted the common practice of older students engaging in sex with younger ones. Deaf victims also knew they would be more likely to have to use the abusers as interpreters, if they chose to report the abuse, when the abuser was probably their only link to the hearing world.
1. The name of the deaf school was changed to protect the identity of a specific location.
1. To use the text relay service (TRS), deaf people use their TTYs to reach a third-party operator, a Communication Assistant (CA). The CA is the intermediary between the deaf person and the hearing person. The communication process would entail the following: the deaf person typed a message which the CA would read and speak to the hearing person. The same occurred in reverse: everything the hearing person spoke was typed to the deaf person and read on the TTY screen. The use of Go Ahead (GA) and Stop Keying (SK) are the key abbreviations used when the deaf person has finished typing and meant it was the hearing person’s turn to respond. SK ended the conversation—the equivalent of hanging up. Video Relay Services (VRS) was an additional service using ASL interpreters rather than typists. Historically, TRS conversations were less desirable than the later VRS conversations for two main reasons: typing speeds are a great deal slower than spoken conversations, hampering a smooth give-and-take, and using typed English leads to many misunderstandings.
2. In July 2010, the 21st International Congress on the Education of the Deaf (ICED), hosted in Vancouver, British Columbia, formulated a Statement of Principle titled “A New Era: Deaf Participation and Collaboration,” in which they stated their regrets to all the effects of the Milan Congress and pleaded for a global call to “accept and respect all languages and all forms of communication” of deaf people (Milan 1880.com n.d.).
1. Home signs are a gestural communication developed spontaneously in the home by deaf children who receive little or no input from a language model within their hearing families. As adults they continue to use home signs which do not share the traditional signs used by the conventional deaf community (Pinker 1994, 293).
2. In a spoken language, the sentence “I really like that dress on you” may have multiple meanings depending on the speaker’s intent: sarcasm, enthusiasm, emphasis on the person rather than on someone else, emphasis on the dress rather than another item of clothing, etc. Vocal intonation, stress on a specific word, rising or lowering of pitch along with facial expression accomplish the speaker’s goal. Visual-spatial languages like ASL show intent visually through facial expressions, intensity of signs including location and movement as well as specific non-manual mouth morphemes (merriam-webster.com/dictionary/monitor n.d.).
1. A description of the BMJ Family Interpreter Fund is in Appendix D.
1. RID’s Code of Professional Conduct sets the minimal standards and guidelines for aspiring and certified interpreters to adhere to when interpreting in community settings, ensuring all parties are aware of the interpreting processes. Interpreting in family settings is generally at the discretion of the sibling-interpreter and the deaf sibling.