Nearly 90 Christchurch people have spent the last year training to be interpreters at the World Games for the Deaf.
The 87 volunteers responded to a call early last year for people to help as interpreters at the Games. The co-ordinator of the volunteer interpreters, Mrs Kay Drew, said that after the previous Games in Los Angeles in 1985, New Zealand realised it would face “huge” problems with interpreters when it held the Games.
“In the States they have special school classes for training interpreters,” she said.
“They learn American sign language which takes two years, then a special training programme to become an interpreter which takes another two years.”
In New Zealand until recently the only interpreters had been the children of the deaf, friends and relatives, said Mrs Drew.
Faced with finding about 100 interpreters for the World Games in Christchurch, Mrs Drew placed a small radio advertisement calling for volunteers.
A call for volunteers to train was also broadcast on a television item when the first vice-president of the Committee for International Silent Sports, Mr John Lovett, visited New Zealand.
The real difficulty was not finding enough volunteers but finding tutors to train them, she said.
Since education for the deaf started in New Zealand in 1880, emphasis had been on the oral method of communication, with people taught to speak and lip read, said Mrs Drew.
“Although the authorities forbade it, the deaf used sign language to communicate with each other – signing is the language of the deaf and they developed it,” said Mrs Drew.
To solve the tutoring problem, Mrs Drew asked people themselves to help. About 50 deaf people have been involved in the last year teaching the volunteers their language.
At the end of the second term of lessons, an advanced class of 24 people was chosen to train to work with the technical delegates in each sport.
The remaining volunteers work with more general assignments while eight professional interpreters work where there are difficulties.
Sign language is not universal – each country has its own signs – and this had created some problems, said Mrs Drew.
However, there were common linguistic features to all the sign languages, she said. Some countries had brought their own interpreters who signed and spoke English as well as their own languages.
“It’s easier if each team brings their own, but the deaf never seem to have a problem communicating with each other so when we really get stuck we get a New Zealand deaf person to interpret for us,”
Mrs Drew said she was delighted that so many people had given so much of their time to train as interpreters and to help at the Games.
“The self-esteem of the deaf has risen because people want to learn their sign language.
“The self-esteem of the local deaf people has also increased because they have hosted this fantastic international event, and they can show the rest of New Zealand what deaf people can do.”
Caption below image: Some of the volunteer interpreters at the World Games for the Deaf. From left are: Mrs Audrey Buel, Miss Vanessa Austin, Ms Isobel Coutts-Weakley, Mrs Leigh Mackintosh, Mrs Jane Ballinger, Mrs Marian Kurney and Ms Patsy Graham.
