Sign 4

They say try not to see anyone from home in the first few months of your placement as it can make you feel homesick. I didn’t have much choice as I attended the Sign 4 conference held in New Delhi from the 17-19/12/09. Needless to say, I didn’t feel homesick but rather it was great to see some familiar faces and hear about people’s experiences of India. I’m extremely grateful to two British colleagues who I’d texted beforehand and they’d brought over some supplies for me. Thank you both (you know who you are)! As an aside, these supplies were Marmite, Nutella and red wine. You can get anything you want in New Delhi but it comes with a price. A small jar of Marmite comes in at a fiver. To put it into perspective, this is more than a day’s allowance. Eating local wherever you are is always going to be cheaper.

The conference didn’t directly relate to my placement as it was on Sign Language linguistics but as it turned out it gave me an overview of the development of interpreting in India from the perspective of a University and a chance to meet some Deaf people from India. I could also practice my International Sign Language and meet Deaf people from around the world. There are many reasons I am doing a VSO placement. One of them is that I’d been after some international experience for a while. There are a few conferences around the world you can attend in linguistics, Sign Language, and both Deaf and interpreting associations. This felt like the start of that international experience except I was there as a new resident of India to work with the community here for the next year.

How good it was to see an International conference for Deaf people held on Indian soil. There is much to do here for Deaf people and any international events can only strengthen the case for government to set up the post of an Interpreter for Deaf people. Until it does it will be unlikely that people will want to work as interpreters with no formal employment and no recompense for that role. The government has said it will recognise the job when there are more interpreters. The chicken and the egg? It seems so. I hope that any work I can do out here can play some part in getting the egg hatched.