Episode 7 - ASL, an important area in interpreting and translation - Nightingale Interpreting Services

Our guests today are the owners of Nightingale,  providers of American sign languages ASL services since 1987. Anthony one of the founders comments that translators and interpreters are two different cultures and the people that get into that field are usually not aware that translators work more with contracts, words, and literature while interpreters are dealing with live things all the time, a peculiar statement to be honest. One of the experiences they told us in this interview is that at the beginning it was trouble to find interpreters and translators for languages with limited diffusion,  and also with habilities to be interpreting live. They also comment that RSI interpreting is not always the first option for ASL interpreting since some tech issues make it slow or difficult to understand. ASL is a language that involves more than using your hands and in this pandemic-era the use of masks limits how the interpreters can interact because ASL interpreters are finding trouble communicating facial gestures. Did you know that you can find small variations of ASL across the country? This blew my mind!