A Million Dollar Success

You may have seen my Twitter or Facebook updates already in which case you’d know: I have had a pretty damn good week.

The main aims of my VSO placement was to set up interpreter training and deliver this in a few cities across India. The other was to develop the Indian Association of Sign Language Interpreters (ASLI) and the interpreting profession in general.  

For the last three months I have had my head down creating the training which we start delivering tomorrow to our master trainers in Delhi. They’ll be a few more dates round the country including Kolkata in West Bengal and Coimbatour in Tamil Nadu. One pressing issue was to get the training certified. I wrote my first government proposal a few months back. This was delivered in person as Arun and I went to meet the ministry concerned. We explained the course had the highest content of interpreter training that India had seen so far. Many courses have so far concentrated on ISL skills. I had word on Wednesday that the training should be confirmed next week as receiving accreditation which means interpreters passing the ASLI course will be eligible to register with the government. There is still much work to do on registration and standards but this is an incredible first step to improvements in the current system. This was this week’s first bit of good news.

The second came on Saturday morning. Followers of this blog will have seen an update at the end of July concerning work being done for the proposed ISL academy. I stated then that the proposals I helped to develop were well received by other organisations and the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment. Since then there have been a few meetings of the new advisory committee and budgets were firmed up. There was an all day meeting that Arun attended. On Saturday he phoned: the centre has been awarded 80 Crore ($20 million dollars).

This will mean the centre houses one of the biggest Sign Language Linguistics departments in the world. There will be research and training on bilingual education for Deaf children. In a country where very few teachers of the Deaf have any knowledge of ISL this is an incredibly important step. There will be funds to encourage ISL poetry and film production. There will be research and training of sign language interpreting. There will be more employment of Deaf people. The icing on the cake everyone is hoping for is that ISL becomes the 19th official language of India.

I am so proud to have been involved in this project and to have made an impact. For anyone that thought I was on a jolly and didn’t want to donate to VSO, you may do so now by clicking here!

It’s no rest for me though. There’s the Delhi course next week for 15 new interpreter trainers. In between the Kolkata and Coimbatour courses, I have a few weeks to complete my next big job. I will be writing another proposal for the government on providing interpreters nationally. We’re talking about a service for anywhere between 4 – 10 million Deaf people. As the census has never had a separate category for Deaf people, nobody knows exactly how many people are Deaf and use Sign Language.  Those that are need access to medical, legal and financial appointments. School, college and university students need interpreters. The courts and police stations need to be able to call on interpreters at a moment’s notice. With scant provision now, mostly through Deaf organisations, there is no information with which to start. 

After consultations and research I’ll need to work out the logistics of setting up interpreter provision in a country 14 times the size of the UK. I’m finishing up at the end of November and it’s going to be a busy few months. Watch this space. Soon there'll be reports of another million dollar success!

The Indian Sign Language Academy - A Work Update

Back in February the Finance Minister announced in his budget funding for a Sign Language academy. The Deaf Way Foundation Director, Arun C. Rao, wrote a blog post and detailed his delight alongside his concerns that the Deaf community would not have effective participation in decisions as to how the academy would be run.

Here’s some background: India has over 500 schools for the Deaf, only two of which use Sign Language. The trend is very much towards the oral, audist approach of teaching and is therefore not successful. The government provides this schooling up to class eight. With the bare minimum for any employment worth considering a pass at the 10th class with any decent job requesting a class 12 minimum standard, Deaf people have been left behind for years. The academy should push forward the agenda of bilingualism and create Sign Language modules for the B.Ed. programme that teachers of the Deaf must take before being let off their leashes in the classroom. In short, teachers have been, for years, teaching in a language the children do not understand.

Interpreter provision is sketchy at best, non-existent at its worst. Interpreters are mostly provided by NGOs  such as Deaf Way and ad hoc interpreting done by bilingual family and friends. Deaf people complain that the interpreters trained by the government organisation are unintelligible and the classes mostly teach Deaf studies and basic sign language. Deaf Way will be delivering the first of five courses in August directly to those already working and skilled giving them quality teaching on ethics, interpreting theory and practical ways of improving and supporting themselves after the course.

The centre will ultimately give Indian Sign Language (ISL) the due it deserves and if successful in its current proposed form, the centre could be the biggest Sign Language Research centre in the world. The Indian government has the chance to bring forward ISL and the efforts of the Deaf community into line and even become a global leader in Sign Language linguistics.

One thing that surprises me is ISL has no real body of literature yet. There are no Deaf film producers, actors, poets, writers or presenters here as there are in the UK. The academy will encourage the Deaf community to be creative and will catalogue the results showcasing them at film festivals and other celebrations of the language.

In all the belated and important work being proposed what I am working on is just a start. The interpreter training is the main task, alongside side providing interpreter support and consultation for the National Association for the Deaf (NAD) in creating their government proposal for the academy. These proposals have been circulated within the Deaf community and consultations have proved fruitful. I was working on the proposals with NAD right up until I left for my holiday to ensure all feedback was included and the budgets were feasible. It gives me great pleasure to read another one of Arun’s posts and see the NAD proposals are being well received by those in the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment. It looks like Deaf people and ISL will finally get the recognition they deserve.  

On the Road for Deaf Drivers?

I was asked to go on short day trip with work. Excited to be on a train out of Delhi, it was a great chance to chat to my colleagues out of the office, to get ideas about where my work with them and VSO will go. On arrival we got picked up by a Deaf man. I was astounded. I’d noticed some tweets on Twitter before I came to India that Deaf people aren’t allowed to have driving licences and here was someone Deaf driving.

It was explained like so: they can drive so they do, the law is behind on these things. Fair play. India is more than behind on this one, why wait?

The Chief Executive of my organisation is currently going through every law relevant to Deaf people in India, and there are many, to advise government about the necessary changes to bring them in line with the UNCRPD and human rights recommendations. He has been reading out of parts of the law and they are archaic. It’s a bit like hearing about some of the old laws in the UK still in existence such as, a man who feels compelled to urinate in public can do so only if he aims for his rear wheel and keeps his right hand on his vehicle.

The National Association for the Deaf (NAD) has been campaigning for Deaf people to be able to hold driving licences for some time. Last week NAD were featured on page two of a national newspaper, The Hindustan Times. There was news that the Supreme Court of India had turned down their appeal on the grounds that driving here is more dangerous and they wouldn't be able to hear the honking.

In comparison to some countries driving here is more dangerous but that doesn’t make Deaf people any less able to drive. There are only 26 countries where Deaf people are not yet legally allowed to drive. It’s a shame then that India is one of them. Anyone who has been to Rome or Paris can see the chaos there where Deaf people are allowed to drive. Can a driver playing tunes with a thumping bass hear the honking? The appeal was turned down illogically. I spent some time in the car and I was no more scared than I usually am!