How We Do Our Work - Overview

Interpreting Biomechanics on Prezi

Professional Discussion (1.5 hours) –  assumes the participant has a general familiarity with the literature and professional practice within the topic area. The focus is “increased understanding and application by the participant.”

Overview of Presentation

 Professional interpreters depend on muscle movement to generate the phonetics and phonology of our target languages, whether spoken or signed.  Because the majority of concern for physical strain and the prevention of overuse syndrome falls on our physical production of signed languages, this presentation focuses on biomechanics of generating ASL target texts and how interpreters use our muscles to do our work.

Subjects will include Hand Configuration, Location of signs within our “work envelope”, Movement force, Holds & Static Loading, Changing work habits to incorporate Micro Rest Breaks, Body Posture / Stance & Breathing, and the effect of processing depth upon reducing mental stress.  Specific instruction to improve the perception of numbers and fingerspelling will also be provided as a group activity.

This presentation is intended to systematically and consistently apply linguistic principles to evaluating the physical aspects of our work and to understand the nature of both physical and mental aspects of interpreting.   Audience members should already have a basic understanding of linguistic terminology in order to gain a practical application of phonetics and phonology to their own work.

Additional Information

Interpreters working at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf have long been adhering to principles of efficient biomechanics as a way to reduce the incidence of Cumulative Trauma Disorder (CTD) or Overuse Syndrome.  The presenter’s experience has been that few other locations around the country are aware of these principles as a cohesive approach to keeping working interpreters healthy and avoiding self-injury.  Biomechanics for interpreting falls squarely within the linguistic categories of phonetics and phonology.  This presentation concretely links the principles of biomechanics with the various muscle movements necessary to generate the phonology of American Sign Language, thus reinforcing linguistic principles while encouraging safe practices within our profession.

Topics for discussion include the following:

1. Hand Configuration/Palm Orientation = hand/wrist position

Neutral wrist posture is in line with forearm.  Most handshapes can be properly produced without deviating from this posture.

2. Location = work envelope

Proximal to Medial (elbow is acute angle to right angle)Avoid Distal to Extended (elbow is obtuse angle to straight)

3. Movement = force of movement

Movement should be smooth and efficient.Avoid forceful, ballistic signing.

4. Holds = static loading

Static loading occurs when the hands are immobile within the signing envelope.  This adds stress to the supporting musculature (upper arms, shoulder, neck, back) and prevents these muscles from being able to rest

5. Ø = “micro” rest breaks

The other side of static loading, micro-rests are short releases from static loading that allow the upper body to rest, even for less than a second, between load-bearing postures.

6. Body Posture and Breathing

Reducing muscular tension due to body posture requires an awareness of when your body posture is out of balance. Breathing is directly affected by body posture and sometimes can become shallow under stressful conditions.  Deep, intentional breaths can help you to return to properly balanced posture.

7. Processing Depth (versus Processing Time)

Mental stress can cause an internal sense that you need to sign faster or to close the gap between the source text and your target text. Allow yourself to become more comfortable with greater processing depth and time so that you increase your confidence in your work and reduce your mental stress.

Educational Objectives

Working professionals in the field of interpreting will gain comprehension of linguistic terminology related to the phonetics and phonology of physically producing ASL target texts.

Audience members will be able to apply the linguistic topics discussed toward their own work through analysis of their own physical exertion in the production of ASL target texts.

Audience members will attain strategies for analyzing their own production of hand configurations, signing space, movement force, static loading, micro breaks, posture, stance, and mental processing.

Information about the Presenter

Brian Cerney, Ph.D., CI, CT, ASLTA-Professional has been a nationally certified interpreter since 1991 and is currently an Associate Professor within the ASL - English Interpreting Program at Keuka College in New York.  Dr. Cerney’s research interests include interpreting processes, human-cognitive responses to stress, and ASL/English/Interpreting pedagogy.  He has presented on topics ranging from interpreters serving as language models in mainstream environments, teaching methodologies for ASL, and evaluation methodologies for target texts.

Prezi - Interpreting Biomechanics

How We Do Our Work - (Part 1) Hand Configuration

In 1965 William Stokoe published his Dictionary of American Sign Language.  In that text he identified three components which came together to generate the vocabulary of ASL: Handshapes, Movements and Locations.  We begin here in our analysis of how not to hurt ourselves generating messages in ASL.

In the 1970s additional researchers identified Palm Orientation as an additional defining characteristic of ASL vocabulary.  For our purposes we will define Hand Configuration as the combination of Handshape and Palm Orientation.

Proper Hand Configuration for signed languages should not cause undue stress on the signer.  In other words, the phonetics, or muscle movement, required to generate language should not cause damage.  If you are hurting yourself using language then you are not using the language correctly - FOR YOU.

So to begin, the muscles in the hand need move only enough to generate distinctive characteristics between the options used in a given signed language.  In ASL, for example, the handshapes associated with spelling the letters "A" and "S" are distinguished by thumb posture/location.  In the "A" posture the thumb is to the side.  In the "S" posture the thumb is opposed to the palm, covering some of the fingers.  As a point of contrast, Russian Sign Language does not distinguish these handshapes (either one is an acceptable representation of the Cyrillic letter "C" (equivalent to the Roman "S").  An "S" is no more correct or distinct if the thumb contacts the ring finger, middle finger or only the index finger... the point of distinction is that it covers at least one finger and is opposed to the palm rather than aligned with it.

The finger extensions in the hand configurations associated with the letters "T", "N", and "M" are distinct only in the number of the fingers to either side of the thumb.  There is not additional distinction made by forcing the pads of the fingers to contact the back of the thumb.

Palm orientation plays a defining characteristic for the hand configurations associated with the letters "K" and "P".  A closer examination reveals that the extended fingers only need to be either at/below horizontal ("P") or at/above horizontal ("K") to provide sufficient distinction.

So why do some of us struggle to generate "over-articulated" hand configurations?  Because over-articulated hand configurations are easier to draw.  Fingerspelling charts across history have shown us idealized hand configurations that only occur when someone asks "How do you make a 'K'?"  They show us fingernails for all four fingers for the letters "T", "N" and "M" because it is easier to represent a finger that is pointed down rather than straight out at the viewer.

So let's check ourselves...  Start with your hand open in a "5" handshape.  Move your index finger down to your palm and place the pad of your thumb over it... like a tight "F" handshape.  Now move the rest of your fingers down and look at your hand from the front.  That's an "S"... or more accurately, that's one version of an "S" handshape.

Now open your hand and quickly make your normal "S" handshape.  Look at your hand.  Some of you have your thumb touching only your index and middle fingers.  Some of you have a tighter hand configuration with your thumb touching three fingers.  If anyone has their thumb touching their pinky then you are misarticulating the "S" handshape and I'll explain why in a minute.  First... look at your hand and change from touching the index-only, two fingers and three fingers.  Notice how your thumb is moving to make the difference between the two-fingered version and the three-fingered version.

Let me take a moment to ask you... how many people have ever thought about this before or done this kind of self examination?

A quick google search of fingerspelling charts will show you that most representation of the handshape show the thumb covering the index and middle fingers.  Some barely touch the middle, some show contact with the ring finger.  My point is that any of these are sufficient to be understood as an "S", so find the version that is most-comfortable (least painful) for you.

Alright.  So you're saying to yourselves, "That's great, Brian.... thanks for teaching me how to fingerspell.  I really am glad that I came al the way to a national conference to get that in a workshop!"  My point is only that you notice your own behaviors and see if anything your are doing is a potential risk.  Are you doing things to yourselves that are hurting you (or at least using more effort/energy than necessary) and can you make changes now that will reduce your risk of injury?

So let me describe two Self-Analysis Projects for you to work on and then we are moving on.

Self-Analysis Project #1 - when you have five minutes of free time and no one else is looking, check your own production of all the hand configurations you use to generate the alphabet.  Start by tensing the muscles in your hand and making the cleanest, correct version of the handshape and hold that posture for several seconds.  Release all the tension in your hand and let your fingers come to a more natural posture.  NOW LOOK AT YOUR HAND and put it into your brain that this hand configuration without undue tension is YOUR TARGET VERSION of that handshape.

Self-Analysis Project #2 - when you have a week of time to mentally complete this process work your way through the entire alphabet two letters at a time.  Imagine a 26-by-26 grid that has every possible two-letter combination in it from A+A and A+B all the way to Z+Y and Z+Z.  Pick a letter and work your way through all the possible combinations of that letter with every other letter THREE TIMES EACH before moving to the next letter.  Let's run through the first several sequences with the hand configuration associated with the letter "B"...  BA, BA, BA; BB, BB, BB; BC, BC, BC...

The point to this exercise is not to notice the hand configurations for each handshape (That was Project #1), but rather notice the shortest, cleanest, most direct movements that get you from the first to the second handshape.  These are called EPENTHETIC movements and they are not meaningful in themselves, but when done smoothly and without hesitations or extraneous movement they help the viewer to better predict the next handshape.  Notice that the transition from "B" to "A" requires the four fingers to move in unison and for the thumb to move simultaneously.  All four fingers should reach their final posture at the same time as each other and also at the same time that the thumb is at it's final posture.

Practice smooth, direct and accurate movements.  When you have completed all the possibilities in the 26-by-26 grid of two-letter combinations you have generated every possible sequence for everything that you will ever fingerspell.  Put that into your brain and let it stay there.  You will no longer ever need to feel overwhelmed with spelling anything in the future because you have already done it before accurately and smoothly.

So one final TIP and we move on.  When you need to fingerspell, SLOW DOWN.  There is not point to fingerspelling quickly just to make errors so that you have to start all over again.  If you don't appreciate Deaf people fingerspelling quickly at you then consider that they might appreciate seeing your fingerspelling done smoothly, calmly and correctly one time rather than multiple attempts.  DO IT RIGHT - ONCE.

How We Do Our Work - (Part 2) Location

For this portion of the presentation I need you all to get your cell phones out and turned on.  Bring up your videocamera program and get it ready to record.  I have two three-minute samples of an English source text that I want you to take turns interpreting.  Make an agreement with the people next to you to use your phone to record you for one of these samples and you'll use their phone to record their performance on the other sample.  Figure out where you are going to do this without hurting yourself or your neighbors... some of you might want to come out of your seats and find some space in the aisles or up front.  Figure out who is going first.  If there are three of you... one person can hold two cameras at the same time... at least in theory... I really want you to have a person work with you and not just set the camera on your chair.  Thirty more seconds and we will get going... if you can't figure out your phone, find a... um... "less-seasoned" interpreter to help you.  What you are about to hear is from my favorite source of English practice material - TED dot com. [www.ted.com]  This is Malcolm Gladwell talking about spaghetti sauce.  I want you to do your best interpretation for a Deaf consumer who is fluent in American Sign Laguage but only knows English well enough to perform Basic Interpersonal Communication... writing short notes to place a food order, completing a basic form.  In other words, if you decide to fingerspell something you better explain what it means.  OK I'm done filling the time.  Either you're ready or you're not... no big deal... here we go for three minutes.

[NOTE TO INTERPRETERS - no need to interpret these practice samples.  If the internet connection is intact then the projected video will include on-screen captions.  If the internet is problematic, my mp4 will not have captions, but interpretations will abound within the room]
http://www.ted.com/talks/malcolm_gladwell_on_spaghetti_sauce.html

Malcolm Gladwell - "I think I was supposed to talk about my new book,which is called "Blink," and it's about snap judgments and first impressions. And it comes out in January, and I hope you all buy it in triplicate. But I was thinking about this, and I realized that although my new book makes me happy, and I think would make my mother happy, it's not really about happiness. So I decided instead, I would talk about someone who I think has done as much to make Americans happy as perhaps anyone over the last 20 years. A man who is a great personal hero of mine. Someone by the name of Howard Moskowitz,who is most famous for reinventing spaghetti sauce.

Howard's about this high, and he's round, and he's in his sixties, and he has big huge glasses and thinning grey hair, and he has a kind of wonderful exuberance and vitality, and he has a parrot, and he loves the opera, and he's a great aficionado of medieval history. And by profession, he's a psychophysicist. Now, I should tell you that I have no idea what psychophysics is, although at some point in my life, I dated a girl for two years who was getting her doctorate in psychophysics. Which should tell you something about that relationship. (Laughter)

As far as I know, psychophysics is about measuring things. And Howard is very interested in measuring things. And he graduated with his doctorate from Harvard, and he set up a little consulting shop in White Plains, New York. And one of his first clients was -- this is many years ago, back in the early '70s-- one of his first clients was Pepsi. And Pepsi came to Howard and they said, "You know, there's this new thing called aspartame, and we would like to make Diet Pepsi. We'd like you to figure out how much aspartame we should put in each can of Diet Pepsi, in order to have the perfect drink." Right?Now that sounds like an incredibly straightforward question to answer, and that's what Howard thought. Because Pepsi told him, "Look, we're working with a band between eight and 12 percent.Anything below eight percent sweetness is not sweet enough, anything above 12 percent sweetness is too sweet. We want to know, what's the sweet spot between eight and 12?" Now, if I gave you this problem to do, you would all say, it's very simple. What we do, is you make up a big experimental batch of Pepsi, at every degree of sweetness -- eight percent, 8.1, 8.2, 8.3, all the way up to 12 -- and we try this out with thousands of people, and we plot the results on a curve, and we take the most popular concentration. Right? Really simple."

OK... now take a moment to stop the recordings or to apologize for messing up and not getting a recording... whatever happened, it is too late to fix.  If you can get a video recording this is really going to help you self-diagnose. What I want you to look for will change as soon as I tell you what it is, and you probably won't have paid attention to it just watching each other, so Get ready to record this second round (switch cameras... figure it out)  OK we are moving forward for three more minutes of Malcolm Gladwell...

Malcolm Gladwell - "Howard does the experiment, and he gets the data back, and he plots it on a curve, and all of a sudden he realizes it's not a nice bell curve. In fact, the data doesn't make any sense. It's a mess. It's all over the place. Now, most people in that business, in the world of testing food and such, are not dismayed when the data comes back a mess. They think, well, you know, figuring out what people think about cola's not that easy. You know, maybe we made an error somewhere along the way. You know, let's just make an educated guess, and they simply point and they go for 10 percent, right in the middle.Howard is not so easily placated. Howard is a man of a certain degree of intellectual standards. And this was not good enough for him, and this question bedeviled him for years. And he would think it through and say, what was wrong? Why could we not make sense of this experiment with Diet Pepsi?

And one day, he was sitting in a diner in White Plains, about to go trying to dream up some work for NescafE. And suddenly, like a bolt of lightning, the answer came to him. And that is, that when they analyzed the Diet Pepsi data, they were asking the wrong question. They were looking for the perfect Pepsi, and they should have been looking for the perfect Pepsis. Trust me. This was an enormous revelation. This was one of the most brilliant breakthroughs in all of food science. And Howard immediately went on the road, and he would go to conferences around the country, would stand up and he would say, "You had been looking for the perfect Pepsi. You're wrong. You should be looking for the perfect Pepsis." And people would look at him with a blank look, and they would say, "What are you talking about? This is craziness." And they would say, you know, "Move! Next!" Tried to get business, nobody would hire him -- he was obsessed, though, and he talked about it and talked about it and talked about it. Howard loves the Yiddish expression "to a worm in horseradish, the world is horseradish." This was his horseradish. (Laughter) He was obsessed with it!

And finally, he had a breakthrough. Vlasic Pickles came to him, and they said, "Mr. Moskowitz -- Doctor Moskowitz -- we want to make the perfect pickle." And he said, "There is no perfect pickle, there are only perfect pickles." And he came back to them and he said, "You don't just need to improve your regular, you need to create zesty." And that's where we got zesty pickles. Then the next person came to him, and that was Campbell's Soup. And this was even more important. In fact, Campbell's Soup is where Howard made his reputation.Campbell's made Prego, and Prego, in the early '80s, was struggling next to Ragu, which was the dominant spaghetti sauce of the '70s and '80s. Now in the industry -- I don't know whether you care about this, or how much time I have to go into this.But it was, technically speaking -- this is an aside --Prego is a better tomato sauce than Ragu. The quality of the tomato paste is much better, the spice mix is far superior, it adheres to the pasta in a much more pleasing way. In fact, they would do the famous bowl test back in the '70s with Ragu and Prego. You'd have a plate of spaghetti, and you would pour it on, right? And the Ragu would all go to the bottom, and the Prego would sit on top. That's called "adherence." And, anyway, despite the fact that they were far superior in adherence, and the quality of their tomato paste, Prego was struggling.

So they came to Howard, and they said, fix us. And Howard looked at their product line, and he said,what you have is a dead tomato society. So he said, this is what I want to do. And he got together with the Campbell's soup kitchen, and he made 45 varieties of spaghetti sauce. And he varied themaccording to every conceivable way that you can vary tomato sauce. By sweetness, by level of garlic, by tartness, by sourness, by tomatoey-ness, by visible solids -- my favorite term in the spaghetti sauce business. (Laughter) Every conceivable way you can vary spaghetti sauce, he varied spaghetti sauce. And then he took this whole raft of 45 spaghetti sauces, and he went on the road. He went to New York, he went to Chicago, he went to Jacksonville, he went to Los Angeles. And he brought in people by the truckload. Into big halls.And he sat them down for two hours, and he gave them, over the course of that two hours, ten bowls.Ten small bowls of pasta, with a different spaghetti sauce on each one. And after they ate each bowl, they had to rate, from 0 to 100, how good they thought the spaghetti sauce was."

OK... stop recording, hand back the equipment, make your apologies if necessary and find your way back to your seats.  You may have noticed that the last segment was closer to four minutes but I wanted to stop at a point that finished the pictures in the air.  That last bit had some rich opportunities to use signing space... New York, Chicago, Jacksonville, Los Angeles... so now let's talk about the next parameter.

Location is the second parameter of signed languages.  It requires the use of larger muscles to establish and change locations.  Changes in hand configuration require fine motor skill - fingers, thumbs and wrists.  Changes in locations require movement of arms up and down, forward and back, ipsi-laterally and contra-laterally plus various combinations of these.

Just as a side note, when I was involved in video relay interpreting I noticed that Deaf consumers were varying the location of the sign HOSPITAL from the place I had learned it - on the outside of the upper arm - to a much easier-to-reach and more highly-visible location... the front of the upper arm (or sometimes even more centrally at the contra-lateral chest).  I realized that my "traditional" version of the sign was not very effective for a two-dimensional broadcast with me seated in a chair because I had to extend my dominant arm to the edge of my signing space, sometimes sticking my elbow out at the camera.  With the immediate feedback of the videocamera I was quickly able to find a version of the sign that looked right but didn't require as much effort (and my guess is that Deaf people were also responsive to this feedback in their own signing).

The point of this example is that our signing locations occur within the limitations of our reach and that the extreme ends of our reach rarely provide enhancement to the clarity of our signs.  Just as we saw in hand configuration, we only need to have enough variation in our signing locations to provide visual distinctions.

Stokoe noticed a variety of locations but he only identified a single "Neutral Space" location in the dictionary of ASL.  Of course neutral space is where most fingerspelling, subject-object agreement, conditionals, comparisons and classifier constructions take place.  Neutral space is FILLED with complex grammar and requires visual distinctions to keep that grammatical information comprehendible.

Scott Liddell and Robert Johnson, two linguists at Gallaudet University, proposed a transcription system for signed languages which provided much greater detail in defining "neutral space".  There were several components involved, but the key component was the category of "Distance".  They identified five points of distance and their graduate students who used the system to transcribe videotapes quickly identified ways to match these labels with two-dimensional examples of signing on videotape.

CONTACT has no light between the extended finger(s) and the location.  In other words, the hand is touching the location.

PROXIMAL distance has light between the extended finger(s) and the location, but the elbow is sharply bent or up to about a 45 degree angle.  Proximal distance might be a milimeter or it might be a couple of inches, but the key reference point is the elbow being less than 45 degrees for facial locations (close to 45 degrees or slightly more for lower locations such as the abdomen).

MEDIAL distance has elbow angles between 45 and 90 degrees.

DISTAL distance has elbow angles between 90 and 135 degrees.

EXTENDED distance has elbow angles larger than 135 degrees (typically at full extension or very close).

So here's your tip.  ALL SIGNED LANGUAGE CAN BE CONDUCTED WITH ONLY CONTACT, PROXIMAL and MEDIAL LOCATIONS.  There is no linguistic need for Distal or Extended postures.  For stylistic reasons, such as extreme emphasis, we may occasionally make a message more clear by using Distal or Extended postures.  Understanding this helps to define the limits of our signing envelope.

Now, think back to a few minutes ago when you were interpreting Malcolm Gladwell.  Did your signs move farther away than medial distance?  Are you self-aware to really know?  Check yourself by looking at your video... later... not now... put that down.   If you see your elbow moving past 90 degrees then your signing space is TOO LARGE.  You are wasting energy moving large muscles further away from your body than you need to, and as a result you are making your message LESS CLEAR than it could be.  I know that might seem counter intuitive, but let's compare movements in sign language to movements in spoken language. All of the sounds I am making in English are the results of movements between locations that are no more than an inch away from each other inside my mouth.  When those darn hearing people try to help deaf people to lipread they OVER ARTICULATE and that just messes up the message for the Deaf person and it looks stupid, too.

Signing that is TOO LARGE is not helping anyone.  You are not helping to make the message more clear for the Deaf person and you are burning up energy in your upper body, exhausting the muscles that you need to do your work.  If I have just described YOU, then here is your self-improvement tip.  You need a flat wall without anything hanging on it and a regular piece of paper.  Put a corner of the paper to the inside of your elbow and bend your elbow so that it is at 90 degrees in front of you.  Now shuffle up to the wall, STILL HOLDING THE PAPER IN PLACE, until your knuckles are touching the wall.  Now practice interpreting.  If you exceed medial distance you will IMMEDIATELY know because you will FEEL it.  Get used to signing in Proximal to Medial distances and you will reduce your risk of hurting yourself with your work.