On November 1 in RO 329 from 4:30-5:30, Sharon Seegers will present her work titled “Finding Interpreters That Can ‘Open Their Minds’: How Deaf Community Leaders Select Sign Language Interpreters in Hà Nội, Việt Nam”.

Sign language interpreters frequently work in contexts shaped by multiple and often competing language ideologies. While the field of interpreting studies has examined role(s) of interpreters in diverse contexts (Roy 1993; Swabey and Mickelson 2008), to date there has been little empirical work on how language ideologies affect the way interpreters are selected and trained. Drawing on a two month long ethnographic study of a community-run center for teaching sign language in Hanoi, Vietnam, this paper explores how language ideologies shape the stakes of interpreting, the positionality of interpreters, and the criteria Deaf community leaders use to screen potential interpreting students.

The majority of Hanoi Sign Language (HNSL) students at the center grew up in hearing families, and were only exposed to Deaf community perspectives on sign language when they entered the sign language training program. Thus, the Deaf community leaders’ criteria for selecting interpreters focus on finding interpreters who can “open their minds” disorienting themselves from hearing ideologies and reorienting toward Deaf cultural norms. This paper explores how reorientation is indexed by interpreting student’s usage of facial expression and a willingness to engage with Deaf people. Facial expression thus becomes the embodiment of learning and occupying a positive language ideology.

The stakes of language ideologies and their impact on interpreting are high: like many countries, Vietnam has multiple and often competing ideologies surrounding the use of sign language. While educators in Vietnam’s oral schools often view sign language as “backwards” and Deaf people as “stupid,” Deaf community leaders work to position sign language as central to Deaf culture and as the best language for including Deaf people in society (Cooper 2011; Cooper 2014). HNSL interpreters are frequently called upon to mediate the very where such ideologies are invoked, contested and (re)constructed, unavoidably positioning them between these competing ideologies.