Letter to Frank Stilwagner of Flying House

Dear Mr. Stilwagner

I am writing as a sometime spoken language interpreter, a member of the community with life experiences that cross several disabled communities, and as someone whose not quite former husband is Deaf and from another country. I have been following the public outcry about the Seattle Men's Chorus continued employment of Kevin Gallagher as a stage signer.

In terms of serving the whole lifetime range of people's experiences with deafness and hearing loss, I was pleased to see in media accountsof your recent concert the use of CART, real-time transcription. I hope you also pay attention to choice of venues and information about sound systems and hearing aids in your publicity materials. But mainly I am disappointed to learn that as of today, the only remedy you propose specifically about sign language issues is more coaching for Mr. Gallagher.

Based on  everything I have read, experiences as a spoken language interpreter and a consumer of interpreter services, experiences helping promote and struggling to provide language access in a number of different contexts, and my own limted experience with Seattle Men's Chorus  events,  this stance serves no one!

Failure to provide competent ASL interpretation does not serve the Seattle Men's Chorus. All that  ever double-entendre and campy phrasing the chorus works so hard to present artistically is completely lost on Deaf concert-goers without  top-grade interpretation. Even WITH good interpretation, interpreting for artistic performances is much more challenging than many everyday situations.

As a member of the community, I want people I go to events with to be able to react to their own  experience, not to have to rely on me to explain something. More to the point,I am legally blind. Many, many visual elements of a performance will fly right past me. My former husband often picked up on visual details it never occurred to me even to look for. One time he and I went to a drama performance with ASL interpretation. I learned the concept of name signs. I also learned
that, though we saw a play by Chekhov, the actors drank vodka like one would drink water, not at all the way Russians usually drink vodka.

Finally, your current stance does not even truly serve Mr. Gallagher but instead leaves him alone and isolated from the community of other interpreters. Interpreters as independent business people both compete with each other for business and also collaborate about vocabulary research, referrals, helping recover when mistakes occur, and many other forms of teamwork. In many cases, interpreter teamwork also ensures that there might be two interpreters who can trade off for long events to prevent fatigue and deterioration of concentration.

Flying House's continual support of Mr. Gallagher without  validating his credentials and asking that he observe normal standards of practice including providing sign language comprehensible to the Deaf community is extremely disrespectful of Deaf concertgoers.

Flying House's stance in this situation also sets a terrible example for many other language communities, churches, community organizations, even families. Often there is someone who sets
themselves up at the go-to person for interpretation and others do not know of interpreter standards of practice or codes of ethics. People wind up putting up with untrained interpretation for years or decades without even realizing they have a right to better service. Sometimes the consequences of poor interpretation wind up being tragic; this is why it matters to do it right and to set good examples.

I am sorry this whole situation is so painful for everyone involved. I am especially sorry the problem has gone on for decades.. I commend the members of the Deaf community who have been moved to speak up again. I hope that you will meet with members of the deaf Community
and that productive conversations will result.

Finally, speaking only for myself, I get tired of getting out my magnifier to read acres of tiny print in concert programs. I wonder whether anyone besides me, Deaf, hearing, blind, normal vision...
would be interested in concert programs on mobile devices. I also wonder whether any program advertisers whose efforts I now blithely ignore might be induced to contribute to ways to think about this idea.

Thank you very much for your attention to these important concerns.
(RantWoman)
Seattle WA

PS Here are some further comments from my blog about different aspects of my background. Perhaps they are informative reading. They are in chronological order.

http://rantwoman.blogspot.com/2013/12/moveon-petition-asking-seattle-mens.html
http://rantwoman.blogspot.com/2013/12/faq-about-seattle-mens-chorus-asl.html
http://rantwoman.blogspot.com/2013/12/more-on-sign-language-misinterpreting.html
http://rantwoman.blogspot.com/2013/12/further-info-about-deaf-community-and.html