Interpreting, History of

It is not known when interpreters first began to practice in the United States, but the need for interpreting likely coincided with advancements in Deaf education in the early 1800s. One of the earliest documented examples of formal interpreting occurred in 1818 when Laurent Clerc addressed the president and U.S. Congress in sign language. While Clerc signed, Henry Hudson spoke his words aloud. Krentz (2000) wrote that when Clerc concluded his address, the chambers were silent out of respect for him.

A more complete record of American Sign Language (ASL) and interpreting dates from 1957, when William C. Stokoe, known as the father of sign language linguistics, began the task of analyzing the language of signs. Stokoe, a faculty member in the English department at Gallaudet College, was intrigued by the constructs of sign language, which had not been studied in detail. Gannon wrote in 1981 that Stokoe started the Linguistics Research Laboratory (LRL), an after-hours and summer research project at Gallaudet. Stokoe subjected ASL to tests that would verify it as a true language; he analyzed all required language components, including phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics. Lucas suggested in 1990 that as a result of his studies, Stokoe found that writers had been compiling sign vocabularies as early as 1776.

After 10 years of research, Stokoe published the first Dictionary of American Sign Language on Linguistic Principles in 1965, and for the first time ASL signs were seen as a part of a distinct linguistic system. Lucas wrote that soon linguists all over the world began to recognize and study sign language.

Prior to Stokoe’s research, many educators did not feel that ASL should be taught in colleges and universities. But over time, more higher education programs began to accept cousework in ASL for academic credit. The availability of sign language classes in colleges allowed more students to study sign language and develop fluency. If a language had greater status, then its interpreters also had greater status, so legitimacy of ASL and interpreters grew.

[Page 499]Stokoe’s research was also a factor in the establishment of laws that required Deaf people to have interpreters. In the 1950s and 1960s, the Vocational Rehabilitation Act Amendments recognized people working in vocational rehabilitation (VR) as professional counselors and provided money for training them. These laws also supported research and demonstration projects to develop and extend knowledge of interpreting. Despite years in which the profession developed a professional association and additional years in which people had worked as rehabilitation providers, it took the original 1954 Act (Pub. L. 83-565) to provide the foundation for the profession of VR counseling. This law enacted extensive revisions to the government’s system, including improved financing for the work, funding of research and demonstration projects, and funding of counselor education and construction of rehabilitation facilities.

Although this law mandated that interpreting services be provided for Deaf citizens, it did not authorize corresponding funding sufficient to train interpreters. Nevertheless, interpreter education tried to keep pace with increasing demand as, along with the new legislation, the federal government began to consider other services for Deaf people. VR had not previously considered language needs that were not being met. Thus, the Vocational Rehabilitation Services (VRS) hired Boyce Williams, a Deaf man, to consult with the organization about the lack of programs for the Deaf.

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