Stellenbosch University Language Centre

Tag: South African Sign Language

Let’s emphasise ABILITY!

Why foreground hearing disability if you can foreground language ability instead?

At the Language Centre, we’d like to emphasise ABILITY when observing International Day of Persons Living with Disabilities, celebrated on 3 December.  We respect and support all forms of communication needs of persons living with various forms of hearing abilities.

Did you know:

👆🏽  Someone who identifies as Deaf uses a signed or visual language as their primary mode of communication. And because sign languages are not universal, we refer to the sign language used in South Africa as South African Sign Language (SASL) – a language that includes the rich dialects from various regions and cultures in South Africa.

👆🏾  Other communities include those who identify as hearing impaired, who choose to communicate using a written and spoken language, and those who identify as hard of hearing, who have good enough access to sound to understand spoken languages too.

👆  The assumption that subtitles and written text are an adequate replacements for SASL has impacted negatively on communities using SASL. Let’s change that!

At SU there are several opportunities for you to learn SASL – have a look here:

🌟 Our Comms Lab SASL short course: https://languagecentre.sun.ac.za/product/south-african-sign-language-beginner-level-1a/

🌟 SASL Acquisition 178 (1-year module) at the Department of General Linguistics

🌟 Soon we’ll have a StellenboschX course giving an intro to SASL that is online and self-paced (follow us to get the notification when the course is ready!).

Join the ability movement and learn SASL!

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Africa Day 2023: Our Africa, our future

In recognition of its wonder and multifaceted nature, the month of May is dedicated to Africa.

Africa Day itself is celebrated on 25 May – this year to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the establishment of the Organisation of African Unity (now known as the African Union), founded on 25 May 1963. On this day, leaders of 30 of the 32 independent African states signed a founding charter in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and vowed to encourage nation-building through unity and freedom from oppression.

This month, the Language Centre has chosen to highlight the important roles that interpreters have played on the African continent to overcome language barriers – from the professional linguists and praise singers of tribal African societies to the modern-day interpreters who facilitate nation-building and provide access to services by interpreting in national parliaments, conferences, courts and hospitals. And, of course, we also think of the educational interpreters who make it possible for university lectures to be understood in Afrikaans, English, isiXhosa and South African Sign Language.

The practice of interpreting from one language to another on the African continent, as elsewhere, goes back thousands of years.

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In many African societies, the professional linguists or praise singers belonged to a long line of gifted multilingual orators who devised praise songs on important public occasions to celebrate the victories and glorious qualities of the chief and his ancestors.”

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The oral art of West African griots (‘bards’) and Southern African iimbongi (‘praise singers’) continues today, with praise singers acting as modern political commentators.

The hearings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission from 1996 to 1998 marked the first opportunity for many South Africans to become acquainted with the marvels of simultaneous interpreting in the eleven official languages of South Africa. Interpreters facilitated reconciliation during the hearings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Since then, they have continued to help to build South Africa as a nation at national and provincial legislatures, municipal council meetings and conferences. Other major employers of interpreters in Africa include the African Union, Pan-African Parliament, UNON (the United Nations Office in Nairobi), SADC (the Southern African development community) and the African Development Bank.

All around the world, sign language interpreters are known for facilitating access to education for Deaf students, but what is less well known is that spoken language interpreters can do the same for hearing students. This way several South African universities make university lectures accessible to students who are not necessarily so comfortable in the language of teaching. At SU, our educational interpreters work in Afrikaans, English, isiXhosa and South African Sign Language.

We celebrate the role interpreting has played over the years to help Africa and its people connect and prosper. At the Language Centre we consider ourselves privileged to be part of that story, and also to be part of the future of Africa – our Africa.

If you’re an interpreter working in Africa, please share your story with us. E-mail us at taalsentrum@sun.ac.za.

Source:
Wallmach, K. 2015. Africa. In Pöchhacker, F. (ed.) Encyclopaedia of Interpreting Studies. London: Routledge.

Blog by Dr Kim Wallmach, Director of the Language Centre

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A contemplation of living translation and interpreting on our doorstep

In September, one of the biggest triennial events on the global translation studies calendar took place in Stellenbosch: the ninth Congress of the European Society for Translation Studies (EST). The Language Centre was a platinum sponsor of the event, and the University’s Department of Afrikaans and Dutch did a sterling job of hosting this coming together of translation scholars from all over the world. Two Language Centre staff members presented papers at the Congress, the theme of which was ‘Living Translation: People, Processes, Products’.

Susan van Zyl-Bekker, an educational interpreter at the Language Centre, delivered a paper entitled ‘Reflective practice in educational interpreting:  Clarifying role and improving ethical decision-making skills of the educational interpreter’. In her presentation she explained that ethical decision-making during the process of educational interpreting aims to facilitate communication to establish teaching and learning in the classroom. If an interpreter cannot hear the lecturer or a student, or does not understand the relevant terminology, she must act decisively in order to establish communication. In her study investigating the demand control-schema (DC-S) of Dean and Pollard (2011) and its theoretical application on educational interpreting at SU, Susan has found that interpreters’ ethical decision-making could be impeded by role conflict. If interpreters are able to influence decision-making more in the classroom, this will mitigate the stress and cognitive load of their work. Among other things, Susan suggests that reflective practice between all relevant stakeholders involved in the interpreting programme be implemented.

Dr Kim Wallmach, Director of the Language Centre, and her co-presenter, sign language interpreter Petri du Toit, used a variety of images as a way of offering special insights into the place of South African Sign Language (SASL) interpreters in the history of the Deaf community since South Africa’s democratic transition in 1994. Their pictorial review focused on interpreters who were in the public eye, and therefore shaped public opinion about sign language interpreters working in professional contexts such as parliament, the media and conferences. In their paper, entitled ‘Framing South African Sign Language interpreting: Pictorial representations of SASL interpreters from 1994 to 2019’, they explored a number of events involving sign language interpreters to gain an understanding of how the visual turn is now playing out in social media in South Africa. They asked whether sign language interpreters understand what it means to be literally in the public eye, and reflected on how this increased visibility might affect the public’s expectations of the role of the interpreter.

Delegates seem to have enjoyed the first EST Congress on African soil. For the next one, translation scholars will be heading north once again: It was announced that the 2022 congress will be hosted by the Oslo Metropolitan University in Norway.

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