National Multicultural Interpreter Project

Leadership Team

A key objective for the project was that a National Multicultural Consoritum be established to guide project activities. The consortium was composed of teams representing various culturally diverese communities: African American/Black, Asian, European American, Hispanic/Latino(a), and Alaskan Native/Native American. A unique leadership model was implemented based on the image of the “starfish.” The starfish represented a five-armed model with each arm lead by both a Deaf leader/editor and an interpreter team leader, functioning autonomously to serve their unique linguistic and cultural issues but connecting through the consortium to provide a unified direction for the whole project. The NMIP project director served as the key consortium facilitator and manager for all project acitivities. This was the first time that a multiculturally diverse Deaf leader and an interpreter team leader had equal leadership roles in an effort to develop materials to benefit the interpreting profession.

Contibutions to the Profession

NMIP’s significant contribution was the creation of the first comprehensive interpreter education curriculum organized around cultural and linguistic topics not previously addressed or emphasized among IEPs. The focus was on addressing what is commonly described in the multicultural education field as six categories of “invisible” and omitted cultural and ethnic issues:

• Invisibility—The significant omission of or lack of attention devoted to Deaf cultural minority groups and related diversity issues in curricular materials may imply that these groups are viewed as less significant than the dominant or mainstream Deaf community.
• Stereotyping—A particular Deaf cultural group is described based on norms or standards of the dominant or mainstream Deaf community, and as a consequence, students or trainees are not provided with sufficient opportunities to develop understanding of the uniqueness of a particular culturally diverse group.
• Selectivity—Instructional curricula, such as textbooks and video materials, contribute to the perpetuation of biased perspectives that favor the dominant or mainstream Deaf community’s interpretation of issues, situations, or culturally diverse groups of people, and as a consequence, students or trainees are not provided with sufficient opportunties to prepare for real-life encounters with culturally and linguistically diverse Deaf populations.
• Unreality—Instructional materials and other resources are used that gloss over issues of prejudice and discrimination, thereby presenting unrealistic or inaccurate portrayals of history and issues related to racism, stereotyping, and oppression.
• Fragmentation—Information and material related to culturally diverse Deaf groups are presented or discussed in fragments within the main body of texts or curricular materials that focus on the dominant or mainstream Deaf community. Such fragmentation may imply that the issues of culturally diverse groups are less important than those of the dominant or mainstream Deaf community.
• Linguistic bias—Curricular material reflects a bias toward American Sign Language (ASL) and English as traditionally used by the dominant or mainstream Deaf community without providing sufficient attention to the nature of signed (e.g., ASL, Mexican Sign Language [LSM]), etc.) and spoken languages (e.g., English, Spanish, Mandarin, Zulu, etc.) used by Deaf people from culturally diverse groups.

NMIP consortium and team leadership meetings, as well as regional and national presentations, prompted more regional and statewide activity. By supporting the travel of team leaders to various state conferences and regional meetings, NMIP provided a mechanism for a wide variety of individuals representing the intepreting profession and culturally diverse Deaf communities to express their concerns, interests, and hopes and dreams for the interpreting profession. Transcripts of all the meetings were the basis for the initial identification of competencies recommended for working with culturally diverse populations. The NMIP funded training and workshops at which trilingual teams and mentees developed protocols and practiced presentational and interpreting skills in “safe” workshops. NMIP extended opportunities to innovative projects such as documentation of LSM language models. NMIP also encouraged the model of Deaf/hearing English/Spanish partnerships, which allowed for multicultural and multilingual interpreter teams.

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