“You did pretty awful. Didn’t you?”

Today I volunteered to help one of the local interpreters (sign language) with an assignment. The program was to have been 3 hours long. Certainly she needed help. No other interpreters were available. While I understand I am not qualified to interpret under the standards of RID interpreters, there are no such rules here. An interpreter doing their work for 3 hours straight is not proper. Besides, I love interpreting. It is one of my favorite activities in my ministry.

So, I told her I could jump in and relieve her every so often. She was certainly grateful for the help.

When the program started I knew I was in trouble. I did not clearly understand the man’s speech. On top of that, he was, of course, speaking Spanish (not my native language) and I was interpreting into Mexican Sign Language.

After the interpreter had been up there about 20 minutes I stepped up to relieve her. I did not do so well. She jumped back in after a 5 minute break. I let her go another 30 minutes before I jumped in again. This time I did better since the subject matter was a bit simpler and I had had almost an hour of listening to the man. I was up about 10 minutes the second time to wrap up the lecture. Thankfully it did not go anywhere close to 3 hours.

The older Deaf and the teachers at the Deaf school said I did a good job. Not great, but “you will get there.” One of the Deaf girls (yes, the same retarded girl I mentioned before) met me with: “You did pretty awful. Didn’t you?”

Thanks for the encouragement!

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