Three examples of interpreters for the hearing impaired that will brighten your day

Everyone’s familiar with interpreters for the hearing impaired. When making a complete list of interpreting methods, you certainly wouldn’t omit this type of interpreter. It’s perhaps the most well-known type of interpreting, which enables communication between those who are hearing impaired and deaf and those who aren’t. An interpreter for the hearing impaired communicates using gestures. That’s why these interpreters are sometimes also referred to as sign language interpreters and their language is called sign language.

Most people are aware of the importance of interpreters for the hearing impaired, but have you ever considered the following three situations?

  1. Watching TV

Around 10% (!) op the population has some kind of hearing impairment, and that means watching television isn’t always an enjoyable experience. As you can imagine, this activity isn’t so much fun when you can’t understand what is being said. To make television accessible for the deaf and hearing impaired, many programmes these days have subtitles. But that’s not all: interpreters for the deaf are also used for various programmes. News programmes, for example, use an interpreter for the deaf, and there are all kinds of programmes you can watch on the internet where an interpreter for the deaf is seated next to the host. For example, the Sinterklaas news programme for children is interpreted online this way.

  1. Attending a concert

At first glance, attending a concert doesn’t really seem like something the deaf or hearing impaired would enjoy, but nothing could be further from the truth. For many years now, American rappers, for example, have been using sign language interpreters at their concerts and performances. They advocate making concerts accessible for everyone, and this is one way of making that possible. At some concerts the sign language interpreter even manages to steal the show from the headlining rapper. Do a search for ‘sign language interpreter Eminem concert’ to see what we’re talking about.

Another fun example is The Eurovision Song Festival, which translated all of this year’s songs into sign language. They take into account the song’s rhythm, mood and melody. This is quite challenging, according to the experts, but the end result is well worth seeing. We recommend searching for the interpretation of Waylon to see the result of the interpreter’s work.

  1. Travelling abroad

Just as almost every country has its own language, sign languages are also not universal. The Netherlands uses Nederlandse GebarenTaal (NGT), for example, while in the United States they use American Sign Language (ASL). This can cause some degree of anxiety when travelling abroad. In the aircraft, for example, you can’t hear what’s being said on the intercom, and gestures in different countries can mean different things. But gestures are often logical in a visual sense; there’s the gesture for eating that everyone in the world recognises. What’s more, in the same way that people who don’t have a hearing impairment speak English with each other in an international setting, many people who are deaf speak ASL as a sort of international language. This makes communication with people who speak another language possible.

We don’t offer the services of an interpreter for the deaf and hearing impaired, but we do promote communication between people who speak other languages. HDo you need an interpreter for this purpose? Let HearHear take care of it.