Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2021/01/28/new-asl-interpreter-for-the-white-house-is-an-extreme-trumper-who-was-on-parler-now-on-gab.html
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Well this is awkward.
At least we will know she’s fuming inside while she is forced to translate all these things Biden and his team say.
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Oh, not another mistake team Biden, my faith is shattered beyond repair.
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I’m sorry, but as she is an affiliate of a group whose membership continuously shows utter disregard for the the truth value of any statement, I do not trust her enough, nor am I at all familiar with the language enough, to trust that she will accurately translate the information.
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Too bad there aren’t thousands of qualified candidates who sign ASL that they could replace her with.
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I’d be concerned that she would not be translating the message totally accurately, and it will have a right-wing slant, particularly given her history. Not a totally different message, but an emotional influence, a smirk here, a roll of the eyes there. ASL is not an exact word-for-word translation, and has a lot of room for interpretation.
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Bingo!
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Yup, it would be easy to sneak that by.
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As I understand it vocal interpreters are supposed to follow a strict code, so for example Mike Wallace’s interpreter when speaking to Ayatollah Khomeini still had to say everything Wallace asked, as uncomfortable as it was for him. I would assume ASL interpreters have a similar code.
Just tell her you’ve also hired another ASL interpreter to monitor her work. You don’t have to actually hire one, but it will keep her in line and enrage her at the same time.
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Ah yes, trusting in the integrity of MAGAts…
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I’m sure the ASL community will be watching her like a hawk and if anything comes up, that will be grounds for dismissal the Biden administration will only be too happy to take up.
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Thanks to the press this issue is getting, yeah that’s very likely. If this had slipped under the radar, I’m not so optimistic.
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or they could just hire the interpreter they trust, to be the interpreter
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I just assumed (hoped) that silver and or gold from the Michigan team were headed for the White House! (I don’t know names. I call them by their hair; they are total rock stars)
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I’ve known several ASL interpreters, and it is a point of pride among them that they reproduce the exact content and tone of the messages they are interpreting, to the best of their ability. Doing anything else would be a fundamental violation of the trust of the people that employ them. That said, the MAGA runs deep in your average Trumpkin. But as long as someone checks up on her occasionally, I guess? Ugh. Just a crappy situation all around.
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I doesn’t mean that individuals will abide by professional ethics. Years ago, the student freethinker group at the college I work for, RIT, which has a significant deaf student population, brought well-known atheist blogger (Pharyngula) and developmental biologist PZ Myers to campus for a talk. It was interpreted. The following day, I noted that someone new was commenting on PZ’s blog about that talk, full of creationist/christofascist ramblings. They used their real name, which I recognized as the interpreter for the talk. Their contracts specify that they are never to express an opinion publicly about events they support, so I reported them. They were let go soon afterward. One can only guess what they were signing during PZ’s talk.
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Ah yes, that fake interpreter Thamsanqa Jantjie!
That story is so nuts!
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Or Lydia Callis:
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Or this guy from Georgia:
Hm. More complicated than I thought. He’s a sign language … performer?
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