The ATA Chronicle - September/October 2017 - 32

OUR WORLD OF WORDS: SPOTLIGHT ON T&I PROFESSIONALS

BY TONY BECKWITH

Interview with Maurine McLean,
Former Sign Language Interpreter

I

have long considered sign language
interpreting to be the most mysterious
version of the kind of work we do in
our particular corner of the linguistic
universe. But I had no idea just how
mysterious-and remarkable-it was until
I started researching it for this interview.
I began by approaching
Maurine McLean,
a federally certified
Spanish>English court
and conference interpreter
who began her career as a
sign language interpreter.
It was Maurine who
suggested I should read the book Seeing
Voices: A Journey into the World of the Deaf
by Oliver Sacks, who was a renowned
neurologist, best-selling author, and
professor of neurology at the New York
University School of Medicine.1 After
reading this extraordinarily moving
book, I realized that much of what
Sacks has to say should be part of this
interview, as it will help readers gain a
better understanding of the field we're
about to discuss. For, as Sacks says, "We
are remarkably ignorant about deafness,
which Dr. [Samuel] Johnson called 'one of
the most desperate of human calamities.'"2
On the whole, since the dawn of human
consciousness, deaf people-literally
unable to speak for themselves-have
been, at best misunderstood, and at worst
ignored and abused.
Having read Seeing Voices, I now
understand that there are different ways in
which to experience deafness. One can be
born totally (prelingually) deaf, in which case
one has never heard language spoken. One
can also lose one's hearing later in life and
become post-lingually deaf, after mastering
speech and gaining an understanding of the
concept of speaking. Other crucial factors
involve the individual's early home life: some
are raised in a family in which they are the
only deaf person, while others are born to
deaf parents and/or have deaf siblings. The
difference, in terms of the deaf individual's
potential and degree of suffering, is truly
like night and day. Later in life, the deaf
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The ATA Chronicle | September/October 2017

For interpreters and translators,
the very idea of a world without
words is incomprehensible.
individual's exposure to supportive-or
otherwise-community and teachers also
has a huge impact on his or her experience.
Those of us who can hear take our
hearing for granted, just as we take our
vision for granted if we can see. It requires
effort to imagine what life would be
like if we were deprived of the ability to
hear people speaking, or never had that
ability in the first place. The thought
is quite frightening, and we're quickly
overwhelmed by a sense of isolation
that we've never really contemplated, let
alone experienced. But I don't think we
can ever fully appreciate what it would
be like to have never heard speech,
and therefore never learned how to
speak. For interpreters and translators,
the very idea of a world without words
is incomprehensible. We understand
instinctively that language is what allows
us to fully embrace our human estate and
culture, gain a sense of our surroundings,
communicate with others, and acquire and
share information. At an even more basic

level, our ability to speak is inextricably
linked to our ability to think. As Sacks
says, "Speech is a part of thought."
Over the past three centuries different
theories have been proposed concerning
how best to teach the deaf to communicate.
Some of these methods rely on the idea
that, with enough training, the deaf can
learn to lip read and speak. Others rely on
a codified system of signs that are based
on the natural gestures that deaf people
have always developed instinctively and
used among themselves. Conflicts have
arisen, pitting competing methodologies
against each other-Signed English
versus American Sign Language (ASL), for
example-just as in other areas of linguistic
teaching. All this, of course, has a direct
bearing on how interpreters approach the
task of interpreting for this community.

So, Maurine, please begin by telling us how
you first became interested in sign language.
How did you learn sign language interpreting?
I've always been drawn to work involving
sound and meaning. One of my earliest
jobs was teaching English as a second
language (ESL) to Spanish-speakers at
a continuing education program at St.
Mary's University in San Antonio, Texas,
around 1978.
I was also performing in a series of
musical groups at the time. Teaching
involves quite a bit of talking, and since I
was also singing many evenings, I started
having recurring bouts of laryngitis.
Instead of resting and reducing my
vocal wear and tear, I decided that if I
were to learn sign language, I wouldn't
need to take time off from teaching. I
began taking sign language classes at San
Antonio Community College and became
proficient enough that I could teach my
basic ESL class through a sign language
interpreter when laryngitis laid me low.
But that self-interested initiation into
the world of deafness soon evolved into
much more as I befriended some deaf
people and started learning about deaf
culture and the varieties of sign language.
I learned more sign language after moving
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