CART - Real-time Captioning

Now that the Canberra Deaf Club is sending out more frequent emails about upcoming events around Canberra and further afield, I'm finding out about more opportunities for me to practice and learn things related to Auslan. One of these opportunities last week was an ACT Government town-hall-style meeting for people to have their say about accessibility issues for disabled people. The event was advertised as Auslan-interpreted. So I went along, and sure enough, the interpreter was there. I arrived slightly late and was puzzled to see that the interpreters' hands were still - it turned out that none of the punters who had turned up needed access through Auslan. The other student who had also turned up for the same reason as I did, must have been just as disappointed that we couldn't get a good hour and a half of practice in. The other student stuck it out longer than I did - I stayed for half an hour and listened to citizens' frustrations and the standard responses from government officials and the private consultants to whom they palm the issues off to, at greater expense to the public.

Before I get too cynical, I should mention the most positive part of the event for me - I got a chance to watch the CART system. CART stands for Communication Access Real-time Translation or Computer Assisted Realtime Transcription (whichever you prefer). Although I am an ex-captioner of closed-caption TV, I never did real-time captioning, for which you need stenographer's skills (like for court reporting or hansard). The captioner simply typed the speaker's words into their specialist machines and, via a laptop and a project, the words appeared printed on the big screen for all to read with only a few seconds' delay. For some reason, I had thought that CART was way more complicated - possibly because of the acronyms or long words in the title. Yay - one more mystery solved!

Interpreted mock conference at Macquarie Uni

Last Saturday, I drove all the way to the big smoke to watch three and a half hours of sign language at Macquarie University. It was a mock conference that some of the advanced interpreting students there were required to interpret as part of their course. Basically, it was like a real conference - in a lecture theatre with proper speakers giving proper presentations with proper powerpoint slides. The interpreting students worked in teams of two. Each student interpreted half a presentation from Auslan to English and then, later, half of another presentation from English to Auslan. It was amazing to see the range of styles that the interpreters had in Auslan. I guess it's the equivalent of voice quality, accent and general demeanor in English, but when they were speaking English, I didn't think about those things consciously - I guess you just process that information without noticing when it's your native language. In a non-native langugage, however, I notice all that stuff. Auslan is also a non-native language for some of the interpreters and I thought I could tell who was a native signer and who wasn't. Generally, the interpreters were wonderful. It's such a hard thing to do, but it was pretty rare that there was a panicky silence or pause during which time their team buddy would feed them what they missed.

All this focus on the interpreters is doing an injustice to the speakers themselves, however. I loved hearing about the experiences and views of the Deaf presenters who signed about the education system, using interpreters in a corporate training environment, deaf-blind services, and deaf relay interpreting. The four hearing presenters talked about being a parent of Deaf children, sign variation in New Zealand sign language and interpreter's attitudes when confronted with a choice of variant signs, how interpreters are judged using rating systems, and ONE OTHER TOPICS I HAVE FORGOTTEN - WILL LOOK UP WHEN I GET HOME AND FILL IN THIS BLANK LATER!

All in all, I learned a terrific amount from this day. I went home thinking that I would so love to one day be skilled enough to sign like these interpreters. At this point, I don't know if I have the ability to do this, but at least it has given me some renewed enthusiasm to keep practicing through the summer.

Deaf event a success

I am happy to report that the show for the AFL Grand Final all came together on the day, but only at the last minute. K (my classmate) and I breathed a big sigh of relief when, on the afternoon before the final, we finally heard that the Southern Cross Club had gotten the captions working on TVs for us and that the Canberra Institute of Technology (CIT) had come through with some funding (after initially losing our application). We had about 20 people turn up and I think everyone had a good time. St Kilda and Collingwood also played their part by adding tremendous drama to the occasion by drawing the match – only the third time in history that the grand final had to be replayed.
A big thank you to all the people who came along, to CIT, whose support enabled us to provide food and drink for the event, and to the Southern Cross Club in Woden for never questioning the fact that Deaf people have the right to have the captions on the club, even when some club patrons complained just prior to our group turning up. Thank you!
PS. Note to self: never go into event management - too stressful!