Finally free of the interpreter's gaze? Uncovering the hidden labor of gaze work for deaf consumers of interpreter services
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated a shift towards remote video-mediated sign language interpreting. This has uncovered the hidden labor of gaze work that deaf consumers of interpreting services have been obliged to engage in. We specifically focus on one group of deaf consumers of interpreter services: deaf academics. We consider the role of interpreter education in the context of the backchanneling expectation, the invisibility of gaze work prior to the proliferation of remote video-mediated interpreting, during the COVID era, and then post-COVID. Throughout this chronology, we consider the expectations of interpreters and deaf academics for interaction and feedback between interpreter and academic. While gaze work historically forms part of the wider calculated consumer labor, this is something within the conference setting that deaf consumers are now more resistant to engage in. This is partly because of sensory overload and the need to manage multimodal resources. However, this is also about exercising choices. We highlight the need for sign language interpreters to be educated in more nuanced ways with respect to gaze behaviors. It is clear that deaf consumers want interpreters to provide solutions to ensure that interpreter-mediated access provides access without the problematic addition of consumer labor.Citation
De Meulder, Maartje and Stone, Christopher (2024) Finally Free from the Interpreter's Gaze? Uncovering the Hidden Labor of Gaze Work for Deaf Consumers of Interpreter Services. International Journal of Interpreter Education, 15(1). https://open.clemson.edu/ijie/vol15/iss1/8Publisher
Clemson University PressJournal
International Journal of Interpreter EducationAdditional Links
https://open.clemson.edu/ijie/vol15/iss1/8/Type
Journal articleLanguage
enDescription
© 2024 The Authors. Published by Clemson University Press. This is an open access article available under a Creative Commons licence. The published version can be accessed at the following link on the publisher’s website: https://open.clemson.edu/ijie/vol15/iss1/8ISSN
2150-5772EISSN
2150-5772Collections
Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/