Anyone closely involved with the Deaf community in the region will likely be at the Southeast Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf conference.
As Alisha Salyers, a member of HDI’s ASL Interpretation Team explained it, everyone who’s anyone in the Deaf community is there, from interpreters from all over the country, Vocational Rehab professionals to the Helen Keller National Institute to the Rochester Institute of Technology and many others.That’s why it’s a big deal that HDI’s ASL Interpretation Team was part of the group that provided interpretation services at the conference.
Salyer was part of the team that provided those interpretation services.
The organizer of the conference lived in Kentucky at one time and was a friend of one member of the team. The organizer requested the entire HDI ASL Interpretation Team to come to the conference. That started the team on a challenging, but ultimately rewarding task.
“Because of the caliber of work that all of these professionals do, it does feel like the stakes are higher there. It’s not our everyday interpreting,” Salyer said. “There was a lot of platform work. There was interpreting across a bunch of different modalities…We were on the ground where innovation happens. And it was really cool to be there. ”
To prepare for that, individual interpreters practiced in specific speciality areas and the team tried to match their interpreters to individual areas where they had knowledge of the language and jargon commonly used.
“The coordinator for this conference was able to get us a lot of that material ahead of time, so even in the weeks leading up to the conference, our team was already planning and practicing, Salyer said. “We all have such different skill sets and backgrounds on our team…because of our different backgrounds, what we all bring to the table, and our openness to collaborate with each other, I think that’s what makes us work.”
It’s also good practice for when the conference comes to Kentucky, giving HDI’s interpretation team an even bigger role than they’ve already played, though Salyer said the people whom HDI’s team helped by interpreting for the last conference will probably return the favor.
“We have a rapport with all of the interpreters in this area,” she said. “We went to them this year to help out. All those same folks will probably come up and help us at our conference.”
