Today, I finally got my first taste of "professional" sign language interpreting when I was called in to interpret for an online mass. It's still considerably less demanding than interpreting in the traditional sense of course, since everything is pre-recorded (the anticipated mass is from the night before) and I had the Sambuhay and Euchalette misalettes to prepare me.
This is not the first time I have interpreted in a mass, I have done so as practicum for our training at PAIDE (also online) and I did some volunteer work at the Marikina ICP church several months ago with the help of a connection. However, in all previous cases, I was only tasked to interpret parts of the mass. This is the first time I will be interpreting in its entirety, and that includes the dreaded freestyle zone: the priest's homily.
Thankfully, the mass presider at Don Bosco (whose name I can't seem to find anywhere) used a relatively "easy" vocabulary, meaning no use of overtly technical terms, and the message of his sermon is easily digestible to be interpreted from my perspective. It was quite an awesome experience I was so excited to share it with my mother (who of course is a lifelong churchgoer). I also posted a clip on my Facebook page encouraging people to learn sign language.
Anyway, even with all the advantages of pre-recorded interpreting, a few wrong signs here and there are to be rightfully expected for a beginner like me so I wanted to take the time to learn and rectify them for future scenarios, post-mortem style. Below is the full video of the mass posted on the CLAD group.
I personally think it would be good to watch the whole experience and analyze where my strength and weaknesses lie as of this point in time.
Introduction: Good intro but I feel I got lost midway. I like that it didn't look rehearsed (because believe me, it was). By the end, of the intro, I was barely stringing words together to make a coherent sentence out of the original. It makes me cringe how crude my hand movements are compared to other interpreters. I'd prefer to be more fluid in transitions, because as DLSU-CSB SDEAS Dean Nicky Templo-Perez mentions "FSL grammar is in the visuals", which means at best I am signing broken sign language.
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