Sign Language Interpreters’ Dilemma in Protestant Churches: An Anthropological Inquiry into Three Deaf Churches in New Jersey and New York Sungbae Paul Park Undergraduate Honors Thesis in Anthropology Woodrow Wilson Research Fellowship Johns Hopkins University, December ‘14 Advisor: Professor Niloofar Haeri Park 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................... 5 ORIGAMI: CHOOSING BETWEEN CONVERSATION AND FOLDING .......................................................... 5 METHODOLOGY ......................................................................................................................................... 10 2. THE DILEMMA OF PRIORITIZING ................................................................................ 12 PROLOGUE .................................................................................................................................................. 12 INTERPRETATION VS. TRANSLATION ...................................................................................................... 14 “PICTURE LANGUAGE” – SARA ................................................................................................................ 16 WIDER QUESTIONS: FORM AND MEANING IN LINGUISTIC ANTHROPOLOGY ................................... 19 3. MISTAKES AND MISREPRESENTATIONS: GOD’S WORDS OR HUMAN’S? ........ 23 OVERVIEW .................................................................................................................................................. 23 CONSTRAINTS IN ASL INTERPRETATION .............................................................................................. 24 QUAKERISM AND FRIDAY MASOWE APOSTOLICS ................................................................................. 27 PENTECOST SUNDAY: ALLOWING FOR MULTIPLE TRANSLATIONS AND LANGUAGES ..................... 29 4. ADDRESSING THE DILEMMA: SINCERITY ................................................................. 33 PROLOGUE .................................................................................................................................................. 33 MAUSS AND TARGOFF: ANTHROPOLOGY OF PRAYER .......................................................................... 34 IN THE INTERPRETERS’ WORDS: CASE STUDIES .................................................................................. 36 David .......................................................................................................................................................... 36 Rev. Buzzard ........................................................................................................................................... 38 Raymond .................................................................................................................................................. 40 PRAYER NOT FOR GOD BUT FOR US? .................................................................................................... 41 5. CONCLUDING REMARKS ................................................................................................. 43 6. BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................................................................. 45 Park 3 Abstract Through an ethnographic fieldwork in three Protestant Deaf Churches in New Jersey and New York, I take a closer look into the problems and dilemma facing the sign language interpreters. First chapter deals with the dilemma of having to decide between prioritizing transliteration of the speaker’s words and emphasizing the Deaf congregants’ understanding. By accurately translating the words, the Deaf might not understand metaphors and language that are incommensurate in ASL. On the other hand, the interpreters, by taking liberty in changing the form of the message, run the risk of distorting God’s words. The next section focuses on the mistakes and misrepresentations, as well as the overarching problem of skepticism – in which “divinely-­‐inspired” speech might be imbued with human agency. The last section traces the specific terms through which the interpreters address this dilemma and consider how the notion of sincerity is employed by the interpreters and the ministers. In drawing attention to the linguistic issues of the interpreters, I hope to address the physical constraints in ASL-­‐English modality as well as wider theological questions that parallel the interpreters’ dilemma. Park 4 Acknowledgement and Note This independent research has funded by the Hanigan family via Woodrow Wilson Research Fellowship of the Johns Hopkins University. I would like to thank the Woodrow Wilson Program’s support as well as the Anthropology Department’s encouragement in culminating my research into an honors thesis. Also, I thank St. Ann’s Church for the Deaf in NY; Trinity Baptist Church of Montville, NJ; and Grace Lutheran Church and St. Matthew’s Church for the Deaf in NJ for welcoming me into their worship and community. The warm invitations and friendships have made this research both personally and academically exciting for me, and I cannot express enough gratitude for their patience and kindness in helping me with this study, especially through their time and helping me with my limited sign language skills. Most importantly, this thesis would not be possible without the help and support of my advisor Prof. Niloofar Haeri, who guided me every single step of the way from IRB review, engaging with the churches and the people, and going through multiple drafts and revisions. Thank you for your invaluable insights and comments, which have made me both humbled and excited to know that there is so much to learn. Note: In this thesis, I differentiate between the capitalized “Deaf” from the lowercase “deaf.” The capitalized form is used to indicate the culture of being deaf, aligned with the Deaf lifestyle and traditions as well as the community – ASL is often the first language, and he or she may or may not have much knowledge of spoken or written English. The lowercase “d” refers to the quality or the person who has a lost the physical ability to hear. Park 5 1. Introduction Origami: Choosing between Conversation and Folding On a hot afternoon in the summer of 2013, my regret for walking in late to the origami class was relieved by the warm welcome of my friends as well as the pleasantly air-­‐conditioned classroom. Charlotte’s Place in New York City is a community center affiliated with the Trinity Episcopal Church, across the street from the 9/11 Memorial. Of the many family and community events that it holds, Tuesday afternoons were reserved for the origami classes taught by an outside interfaith minister. Already there were two of my friends from St. Ann’s Episcopal Church for the Deaf, New York: Erin and Melissa (pseudonyms, as with all the other names in this paper). Erin, who is profoundly deaf, is a retired textile designer and now the lay leader1 of the church. Having been trained in the oral tradition2, Erin is an excellent lip-­‐reader, and she learned American Sign Language (ASL) only later in her life. Melissa and her husband emigrated from the Philippines, but the couple had to quickly give up working in the securities industry after the crash of the stock market. Since then, she started taking classes to be an ASL interpreter and have been helping at St. Ann’s as an unofficial interpreter. In conducting my research in Protestant Deaf churches, I have gotten quite involved in volunteering in their programs and other activities. This week, Melissa, Erin and I had met in downtown 1 In
the Episcopalian Church, lay leaders are nominated by the priest and authorized by the bishop. In the
absence of a full-time minister, like at St. Ann’s in the summer of 2013, the lay leader manages much of the
clerical and worship works of the church.
2 Oral education for deaf students is characterized by focusing on oral, rather than manual, techniques of
communication using lip reading, speech, and vocalization.
Park 6 New York in preparation for the upcoming origami social event; we three would learn and be the teachers for a Thursday social event at St. Ann’s Church. It did not take much time to master folding the swan and the crane. Two hours were mostly filled with chitchat about various arts events in New York City. In addition to the origami teacher, there were two other visitors who were seated at the table with us. Our conversation topics were diverse in range and quick in their change. They included upcoming museum exhibits, recent art history books, and Shakespeare in the Park (a play held in NYC every year). Erin is an excellent lip-­‐
reader, but there is an inevitable limitation for the Deaf in following the quickly changing flow of a group conversation. This struggle is especially evident in the case when one topic inspires another, causing members of the group to suddenly blurt out their thoughts and often having overlaps of several voices. Melissa and I tried our best to simultaneously sign as we spoke. But Erin still remained an outsider, against all of our best-­‐intended efforts to include her. When she looked down at the origami paper to perform the next series of folding, she lost a whole segment of the group’s conversation. By the time she looked up, the conversation at the table would have already moved on to a different topic. As Erin and I walked out from Charlotte’s Place after the class, Erin told me of the hardship of being Deaf, of being physically present but unable to participate in the hearing world. Her words resonate with me more in the context of her past career as a textile designer. I knew how talented and knowledgeable she was in art, how much she enjoyed visiting art exhibits and events that go on in the city, and how her passion and interest are in fashion and art. The eyes must replace the ears in order for her to participate; when Park 7 she is focused on the origami, the eyes are turned to another task and the understanding of the conversation stops. Since sign language and spoken language each have two very different modes of communication, the aforementioned experience of Erin is a struggle that the Deaf deal with on a daily basis. Sign language interpreters serve to bridge the gap between the two populations, but limitations certainly exist. They must relay the message accurately, not jeopardize the “Truth”3 or the gospel, and try their best to capture the poetry and the aesthetic aspects of worship. Unlike the other laypeople who can only focus on him or herself during worship, the interpreter must attend to both the preacher’s words and to the Deaf congregants’ reception of the sermon. Another problem facing interpreters, which I will not detail much in this paper, is attending to their own worship and personal edification. At one Baptist church that I visited, they had enough sign language volunteers to rotate interpreters each week. However, under-­‐resourced churches like the Lutheran one I visited, a single interpreter signed at all the services every week. In this thesis, I would like to focus my attention on the sign language interpreters’ dilemmas during Sunday worship services. They must decide between 1) prioritizing congregants’ understanding of the spoken message or 2) staying as close to the Scripture or to the preacher’s words as possible. The interpreters’ efforts in compromising and delivering will reveal their semiotic ideology in regards to worship, faith, and human versus divine agency. Another element that must not 3 This
word choice has been used by a Baptist minister in my interviews to imply the core message of the
gospel (including Trinity, Christ’s incarnation and death on the cross for the forgiveness of sins, and Christ
as the messiah)
Park 8 be excluded in our consideration of their semiotic ideology is how mistakes are situated in this discourse. The interpreters, as believers and adherents to God’s words, must not distort or change the message of the gospel, but, as humans, they cannot be infallible. Accounting for this potential for mistakes and false teachings, the interpreters, and by extension all the other believers, have to grapple with the uncertainty and skepticism in regards to language. How could the worshippers be certain that they are aligned with the Christian message? Although I will attempt to answer this question throughout this thesis, an initial point of entrance into this thought is what Matthew Engelke calls “the problem of presence”: drawing from Ricoeur’s hermeneutics, social intercourse after the fall of Adam and Eve is always characterized by ‘suspicion,’ or marked by a degree of uncertainty. This means that preaching as well as spiritual inspirations must be critically examined to see if they are truly of God or of evil and faulty human desires. In the Protestant churches that I will focus on here, the inerrant Bible (Old and New Testaments) become the standard through which actions or thoughts can be affirmed or denied as being from the Holy Spirit. Thus, it will be interesting to reference Engelke’s post-­‐lapsarian subject in mind, as I draw on the dilemmas of the interpreters as one that must aptly deliver the message of the gospel in the midst of the constraints and uncertainties in sign language interpretation. But most importantly, the main focus of the paper is to be attentive to the sign language interpreters’ dilemma in interpretation. I will focus on how this dilemma is articulated by my interlocutor interpreters, and how they make sense of the pitfalls and limitations of language interpretation. Furthermore, I will highlight Park 9 some of the bigger underlying parallel dilemmas, such as problem of translation in Christianity and the problem of skepticism (as to how much of a speaker’s words is imbued with human agency or otherwise evil intentions – as opposed to preaching divinely inspired by Holy Spirit). I draw on these parallels with the intent of widening the readers’ scope in understanding the sign language interpreters’ dilemma, but my main focus of this thesis is to remain close to the ethnography to better understand how they understand the dilemma in their own terms. The bigger theological or moral questions regarding the stakes of mistakes in interpretation is outside the purview of my research inquiry. In fleshing out how the sign language interpreters deal with their linguistic dilemma, I will show the diversity of reactions and understandings by different interpreters. In addition, the limitations in interpretation calls for new ways of inhabiting the space of worship, not as one-­‐sided transmission of preaching but as a dialogue in which the interpreters check the Deaf congregants’ reactions and learn new signs from them. In addition, the interpreters’ personal relationship with the Deaf congregants is also an important aspect in the way that the interpreters make sense of the dilemma. Park 10 Methodology This anthropological research is the result of four months of ethnographic fieldwork in the greater New York City Area from the period of May 2013 to August 2013. I was closely engaged in the following three churches: Grace Lutheran and St. Matthew’s Church for the Deaf in Union, NJ; Trinity Baptist Church of Montville, NJ; and St. Ann’s Church for the Deaf in New York City. In addition to attending their Sunday worship services, I have participated in some of their weekday social events as well as conducting in-­‐depth interviews (ranging from 20-­‐minutes to 3 hours) with the Deaf congregants, the respective ministers, and the sign language interpreters. I focus specifically on Protestant Churches, each of which has differing versions of the Bible translations. I am interested to see how the sign language interpreters’ dilemma exhibits a parallel problematic in the Protestant theology’s freedom of translation into vernacular language and the representing of God’s words through personal experience. Although I cannot reproduce the full extent of linguistic ideologies and dilemma in religious sign language interpretation, I give a brief summary of the sign language interpreters’ semiotic ideology: God whose message in the past (the Bible) and the present (inspiration of the Holy Spirit) are equally valid and true, God as the ultimate agent and authority over language, and the need for God’s intercession and mediation in interpretation (in the face of mistakes and distortion due to human agency). While recognizing the constraints and problems of interpretation, the sign language interpreters and the pastors always quoted back to the Biblical passage in Park 11 Romans where Apostle Paul writes, “And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God” (Romans 8:27). The idea of “God’s mediation” as described by the interpreters is more of an abstract understanding rather than a technical intervention that is tangible in worship; thus, it is difficult to differentiate to what extent is the message imbued with human agency while protected by God’s mediation. However, through the course of this thesis, I hope to address how all of these questions and answers add to the sign language interpreters’ dilemma. Park 12 2. The Dilemma of Prioritizing Prologue The famous “Hallelujah Chorus” from George Frideric Handel’s 1741 oratorio Messiah repeats the phrase “hallelujah” over and over. Some phrases are sung majestically and forcefully while some are sung in intimate whispers. The changing dynamics of the repeated single phrase add a whole new dimension to the musicality heard by the listeners. With each emphasis and subtlety, the audience receives not a mere repetition of words but dynamic impressions of fortissimo and andante. This affective impact of music and poetry, which is so obvious and apparent when we listen to the song, becomes difficult to grasp once it is written down on paper. Once language (which I employ in the general sense to include musical aspects) changes in form, it is difficult to commensurably replicate it in the other medium – which in this case would be from spoken to written, losing melodic, acoustic, and other elements that create affective emotions. Such was the hardship for Sara, an ASL interpreter in her forties and a mother of three children, who was interpreting for her children’s annual Christmas concert at the school. Although her children are all hearing, her long friendship with the deaf congregants of the church led her to learn ASL and eventually volunteer her time for various local community activities. She started by interpreting hymnal parts of the service at her Baptist church, and as she got better, Sara often volunteered her time interpreting for her Deaf friends to help them deal with legal or medical issues. On this particular Christmas concert at her children’s elementary Park 13 school, she had to interpret the “Hallelujah Chorus.” “After a while, repeated signing of ‘hallelujah’ became meaningless,” says Sara. “I knew they understood it the first time around, and I just signed ‘repeat words’ and ‘music continues.’ Then, I just signed the ending.” Sign language interpretation is not a one-­‐sided transmission, explains Sara. All the ASL interpreters I met in my fieldwork4 have voiced the importance of paying attention to the Deaf people’s reaction while interpreting. Paying attention to the subtleties of their facial expressions, it was imperative for the interpreters to discern which parts were relayed clearly and which were not understood. Based on the reactions of the deaf, an interpreter might take extra time to explain the previous message, often times delaying the message of the speaker or skipping details as a result. Like Sara’s frustration shows, when a message changes from one linguistic modality to another, the subtle nuances and the affect created by the language become very difficult to transfer into the other medium. Here, I describe the dilemma faced by the sign language interpreters in interpreting church services. Through close reading of interviews with various interpreters, I hope to shed light on how the interpreters struggle with prioritizing understanding versus verbatim translation. 4 Due
to limited time allowed for ethnographic fieldwork, my research inquiry is narrow in focus, but it had
its methodological advantage, allowing me to focus on interpreters from two denominations (Reformed
Baptist and Episcopalian Churches).
Park 14 Interpretation vs. Translation Sign language interpreters use the term “interpret” instead of “translate.” In order to observe the semiotic ideology underlying this terminological preference, I must first define the two terms as they were implied by my interlocutors. In interpretation, the interpreter takes a message from one language (in our case, spoken English) and attempts to render it into a different target language (ASL). Translation, on the other hand, implies accurate transference of meaning from one word to another, thus implying that each signifying word has its counterpart form in another language. I must also note here that my interviewees used the term translation in a wider scope to include the concept of “transliteration,” which means the conversion of text from one script to another. In the case of interpretation for the deaf, transliteration means that every spoken English word would be converted to a signed form of English, which is another type of existing sign language system called Signed Exact English (SEE). However, American Sign Language (ASL) is the predominant form of language used by deaf communities in the United States. While SEE would include all articles and conjunctions that correspond to English syntax and grammar, ASL has its own syntactic form, which is more suited to quick and fluid conversation between signers. For instance, the English greeting “how are you?” would be either signed as “feel you?” or “how you?” In either interpretation of the ASL greeting, it is clear that the spoken English form is not retained as it enters a different linguistic modality. The interpreters’ conscious preference of the word interpretation over translation is, in a sense, a declaration that they cannot capture the full nuances and subtleties in this spoken-­‐to-­‐signed transition. Therefore, one Park 15 spoken English word, in all its socially indexed and culturally implicated life, cannot be pinpointed to another counterpart in the signed form. This incommensurability has bigger ramifications in the context of the religious experience of worship. The Deaf in an ASL-­‐based worship would not have to worry about this linguistic difficulty, but the reality in the American Protestant churches is that there are just not enough religious resources available for the Deaf. First, there are not many deaf or signing preachers. This number inevitably limits the number of independently Deaf churches. As a result, many Deaf congregants belong to a hearing church, and they must make sense of the English-­‐based service (including English hymns, English metaphors/examples during sermons, etc.). Thus, Deaf congregants in a hearing church must rely solely on the interpreters’ delivery, withstanding all of the limitations in interpretation articulated above. Therefore, the interpreters’ dilemma intensifies in trying to accurately represent the words of the Bible and the message of the sermon. If there are consequences to misrepresenting human words, what is at stake in representing God’s words? Furthermore, while the interpreters must try to stay true to the original words as much as possible, they must sometimes change their articulation of the message so that the deaf can understand. How, then, are the interpreters supposed to make sense of this dilemma? In order to better understand the dilemma, I will draw upon some of the interview extracts from interpreters at the Trinity Baptist Church. Park 16 “Picture Language” – Sara Changing the form of language is especially necessary in light of the Deaf people’s English levels. Average reading level of the Deaf by age 18 has remained relatively unchanged at third or fourth grade levels (Allen 1994; Karchmer and Mitchell 2003; Moores 2009; Holt 1993; Traxler 2000). A number of studies have shown that children with residual hearing tend to have better reading levels and academic outcomes than those with lesser hearing, but even mild hearing loss affects reading levels (Wilbur 2000; Antia et al. 2009). A key component in the determination of reading levels is the ability to understand metaphors, which my interlocutors referred to as “picture language.” While factual, declarative sentences might be relatively easily translated into a different language, poetic nuances and language-­‐specific idioms become much more difficult to express in another language. Based on my fieldwork, I have found that all of my informants have expressed the difficulty in translation of religious poetry due to low reading levels and hardship in understanding new imagery. Sara explains, Dayspring in the hymn cannot be translated to day and spring. If I was interpreting “Fountain Filled with Blood,” they [the deaf] think of blood coming out of a fountain. Some hymns I need 20 words to describe what is written in 5; I can’t do it. “Jesus Friend of Sinner” and “Amazing Grace” are easy songs they can understand. I’m pidgin English not SEE like Janice and Susan [other interpreters at the same church]. Sometimes I’m shrading what’s going on and not signing. With the deaf, it’s all about creating a picture, not in words. When I interpret differently it does change their ability to understand what they are saying. My deaf friends would give me feedback they’ve understood what that song meant. Park 17 Sara’s foil of her own interpretation style to Janice and Susan’s illustrates the differing degrees to which each interpreter decides to stay close to the words or change the form for easier understanding. While some might prefer to transliterate the hymns (leaning towards SEE), some like Sara might entirely change the form of the sermon so that they deaf might understand more easily. For example, Janice and Susan might interpret the song “Mighty Fortress is Our God” through the following ASL sequence: power-­‐castle-­‐our-­‐
God. On the other hand, Sara might interpret this phrase as strong-­‐power-­‐like-­‐castle-­‐
our-­‐God. So, the deaf congregants, who sign together with the interpreters during musical worship, often sign the same song differently based on who the interpreter is that Sunday. While popular songs like “Amazing Grace” are much easier to be standardized5, currently there is no universal ASL to all the hymns. As a result, the interpreters must often spontaneously translate the words in English and sign it in ASL. A similar problematic arises when signing verses from the Bible. Richard, another interpreter in his thirties at the same church, leads the Bible Study classes on Sunday mornings. He explains his signing focus in Bible Study reading classes, Personally I feel that if you’re going to read the Bible, the words are so important that I try to sign more closer to SEE. We're leading the classes closer to SEE because we’re trying to help them read the Bible. It is a slow process and frustrating, but we’re not helping them to read aloud the bible but to understand it. So they’re learning more. 5 I
wish to note here that while “Amazing Grace” is relatively easier to standardize, there is not a “set” or
“official” ASL version to the song. Depending on geographical area, denomination, or simply preference,
there is multitude of ASL versions.
Park 18 This binary of understanding versus accurate translation does not necessarily define one interpreter from another. In fact, a single interpreter constantly struggles with both sides of the dilemma, and complicating this problem are the physical constraints in interpretation, such as speed and time. Raymond, who prefers to interpret in SEE during Bible Study classes, explains his inability to do so during simultaneous interpretation of the sermon. He writes, For me, I try to get them to understand. Because of my limited vocab, in a typical sermon, I can’t stay on top of everything. I don’t have the speed or the vocab. There is obviously a difference in translation and interpretation. My main job is to make them understand as much as they understand and stay as close [to the preaching]. If there is an illustration that I know they’re not going to understand, I’ll just reemphasize the last point and ignore the illustration. Because I know if I spend the next minutes explaining about an illustration, it may throw them off. I’ll just sometimes forget that little illustration. As shown, the interpreter might be inclined towards one side or the other, but even this preference is contingent upon the situation, signing fluency, and context. One interpreter does not necessarily choose between SEE and ASL. In the sections to follow, I draw attention to how the interpreters tend to their mistakes and potential for misrepresentation, then I will illustrate how the notion of sincerity plays a key role in how the interpreters make sense of this linguistic dilemma and the limitations in interpretation. For now, however, I place the interpreters’ dilemma against the wider discussion around how religious experience is understood in light of language beliefs. Park 19 Wider Questions: Form and Meaning in Linguistic Anthropology The dilemma in translation and interpretation is not exclusive to sign language interpretation. I hope that drawing a parallel to the wider discussion can shed some light on the ways in which the sign language interpreters’ dilemma are larger than the linguistic difficulty. Christian histories, as well as all other religions with Holy Scriptures, have had to address this dilemma one way or the other. Can God's word or divine words be changed into a different form? What is the relationship between form and meaning? Before I dive into Protestant semiotic ideologies, I shall briefly engage with Niloofar Haeri's work that explains the Muslim semiotic ideology underlying the reading of the Qur'an. I believe this comparison will present an interesting foil in regards to the differing conceptions of the relationship between form and meaning. The introduction chapter of the Book Sacred Language, Ordinary People (2003) looks into the issue of what questions arise in the attempts to modernize a classical and sacred language. The argument evokes an important conceptual connection between form of language and meaning. While de Saussure's conception of language suggests an arbitrary relationship between form and meaning, the Qur'an (which is in Classical Arabic) is viewed as not having an arbitrary relationship between form and meaning. In this view, each and every word is divinely chosen, which becomes the reason why the Qur'an cannot be translated but only interpreted (Haeri 2003:13). Furthermore, the same reason underlies the fact that the language of the Qur'an does not change in form over time, as opposed to vernacular languages like Egyptian Arabic. Park 20 Like Sheldon Pollock discusses, this unchanging and uniform nature of the sacred language means participating “in a vast ecumene”; language has the power to produce a different place based on what connects them (Pollock 1998:51). Whether it is Pollock's Sanskrit or Haeri's Classical Arabic, a classical language (even if it is not used in everyday speech) possesses a quality that produces certain uniformity among its users. This relationship between form and meaning presents an interesting foil against Protestant understandings of language, which have allowed for a comparatively more flexible freedom in the translation of the holy scriptures. Even within the same language, there are multiple available translations based on denominational preferences as well as geographic and temporal relevance. In this case, what is the factor that connects the believers of the Christian faith to the “vast ecumene”? If the message of the Christian gospel can be reproduced and circulated in multiple forms, are we not then faced with the irony that multiple forms are allowed to represent one message? What underlies the claim that the relation between form and meaning are arbitrary? What then is the transcending or overarching agent that allows for this freedom of translation to happen? Based on my fieldwork, the reductive and simplified answer would be that God would watch over these translations – that the Holy Spirit would mediate through the faults and mistakes, and that the believer, with divine guidance, will stay as true as possible to the content of the gospel. A similar discussion is found in historian Ramie Targoff’s description of the New England Puritans who have broken away from the Catholic Church’s Latin Vulgate Bible and created the Bay Psalm Book, written in vernacular English. In their terms, God, by his design, has “kept Park 21 secret the nature of Hebrew verse in order to enable his worshippers to pursue their own poetic forms in their translations of Scripture” (Targoff 2001:130). Here, the relationship between the language’s form and meaning are arbitrary. As long as the “core message”6 of the gospel was preserved, the believers had certain authority and control over language. However, if we take a step back from the theoretical domain, the actual everyday practice of worship will prove to be much more complicated. If the holy words can be translated or expressed in various forms, where is the limit? At which point does one pass the threshold of “truth” and tread the waters of heresy? In lieu of the emergence of a universal and accurate boundary line, Protestant worshippers are instead faced with the constant suspicion that the translated or expressed words might be tainted with the voice that is not God’s. For instance, the traditional Quaker worship (which I will discuss in detail in the next chapter) believes in the active speaking of God through the human body. With each member’s sharing during the Sunday service, the congregants listen and meditate on the words with careful attention and reverence. However, if one member is suspected of sharing personal or irrelevant insights during worship, the authority of this divine speech is questioned, and the council of members might quietly approach the member to attend to the outspoken member. This brief example shows us that authority in regards to translation of God's word is neither taken for granted nor black and white. There is a constant suspicion that the interpreted words might be imbued with human (or sometimes sinful) desires, and the authenticity of the divine words 6
My interlocutors used this term to refer to the general idea of the Christian doctrines.
Park 22 cannot be objectively determined as the group must take careful consideration in judging the validity of the divine words. Thus, to what degree is this flexibility in translation and interpretation allowed in the Christian faith? Here, I do not mean to say that denominational or interpretive differences do not exist in other religions like Islam and Judaism; instead, my intention is to consider the relationship between meaning and form, and shed light on how that it is at the center of my interpreters dilemmas. Park 23 3. Mistakes and Misrepresentations: God’s Words or Humans’? And count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures. (2 Peter 3:15-­‐16 English Standard Version) Overview In the previous chapter, I elaborated on the sign language interpreters’ dilemma of prioritizing understanding for the Deaf versus accurately representing God’s words. Issues that come up, however, are not unique to translation and interpretation in Deaf churches. What is different among sign language interpreters is that the linguistic modality is different (from spoken to signed). In this section, I discuss some of the physical constraints in transitioning from one modality to another. I elaborate on the constraints as a way to consider the problematic of skepticism underlying Christian testimony: how does one know if a testimony (or a sermon) is from God. For the interpreters, the dilemma encapsulates this wider question of how to make sense of mistakes and constraints, in order not to misrepresent God’s words – whether intentionally or unintentionally. In other words, how can the interpreter (or any believer, in fact) be certain that he or she is preaching the right doctrine? Park 24 Using Richard Bauman’s study (1983) of the symbolism of speaking and silence among seventeenth century Quakers and Matthew Engelke’s (2007) Friday Masowe Apostolics of Zimbabwe, I wish to consider the ways in which different Protestant denominations make sense of constraints and limitations in interpretation of God’s words (whether it be the Scripture or a preached sermon). Constraints in ASL interpretation The biggest constraint facing Deaf worship in the three churches that I visited was the lack of religious resources available. The Episcopal Church for the Deaf in NYC was the only independently Deaf church, but they do not currently have a signing minister and must rely on a speaking visiting priest (whose words are interpreted by a volunteer or a lip-­‐reading Deaf lay leader Erin). The Deaf congregants in the two other churches were part of a hearing congregation. If the Deaf congregants attended an ASL-­‐based worship, the dilemma and the problem laid out in this thesis would not arise. However, signing ministers are low in number, and it is rare that a certified or a fully bilingual (ASL and English) interpreter is present in the hearing-­‐Deaf congregation. As a result, the interpreters who are the focus of my research are volunteers who have learned through community classes and improved their skills through interactions with the Deaf members of the church. Thus, the anxiety of misrepresentation and mistakes are more of an acute problem for the interpreters. Park 25 Trinity Baptist Church of New Jersey is an example of a church that has enough volunteers to interpret Sunday services. Sara, one of the interpreters and the mother of three discussed in the previous chapter, explains the mistakes she made early in her interpreting experience. She writes, In the beginning, we [the ASL interpreters] were slow, and we were way behind the rest of the congregation. Few times when illustrations or funny stories would be given7, like 10 second later, the Deaf would laugh. Deaf see that the congregation laughing, and they want to know, but it might take a few seconds. Or in another case, I would sign it wrong – signing “circumcision” instead of “about”– and the Deaf laugh and everyone else don’t get it. I would like to highlight here the delay in delivery as well as the potentiality of wrong signs to come out as a mistake. Sara continues, The first time I interpreted for a group of deaf, it was at a wedding. “Great is thy faithfulness – blessings all mine and ten thousands besides” but I signed “ten dollars more.” they [the Deaf] were all chuckling. They all knew it was my first time interpreting. They understood the song, and they knew me. When you know the person interpreting, then they are more forgiving. Or once, I signed something like “God is not faithful.” You’re just like, ‘did I really say that?’ And you have trust to understand that you didn’t mean that. These mistakes are not exclusive to Sara. Even veteran volunteers would often forget words or sign incorrectly. Raymond, who is a volunteer interpreter at the same church, adds, “We don’t have any formal training. So our interpretation is very limited. There are no professional interpreters.” If one of the Deaf seemed confused, Raymond would sit with them after the service and explain what the sermon was about. 7 Such as jokes or allusions in a sermon used to illustrate a point. Park 26 Sara’s remark that the Deaf “know” her and trusts to understand what she meant is very interesting. One of the ways in which these mistakes are addressed is through this friendship and the relationship that exists between the Deaf congregants and the interpreters. Mistakes, in a sense, are tolerated and not so problematized, because there is an underlying assumption that either the Deaf can ask questions after the service or the interpreters can explain themselves after the mistake. However, this is not to say that the interpreters disregard the consequences or the gravity of interpreting God’s words. Instead, I would like to note how the experience of worship is not limited to the worship service time, the temporality of worship extends beyond the space of the church and the interpreters’ friendship with the Deaf congregants can be seen as supplementing the experience of worship in order to address this dilemma. The central axis of the problematic exemplified by these mistakes and misrepresentations are the skepticism of how one trusts certain words to be of God’s. Even if there were no mistakes, the wider question embedded in worship is: how can we ever be sure that the preacher is speaking with pure intentions and divine inspiration – let alone the interpreters who change the form of the said words, withstanding all of the mistakes and limitations articulated above. I wish to turn briefly to Quakerism and Friday Masowe Apostolics as references to how different denominations address the same problem through a different understanding of language and the Bible. Park 27 Quakerism and Friday Masowe Apostolics I wish to briefly discuss Quaker theology and its relation to language in order to explore how language functions in God’s becoming present in worship – the way in which human words can be legitimized as divinely inspired or revoked as human. Quaker theology emphasizes the importance of divinely inspired “legitimate speaking” over “carnal talk,” or everyday speech imbued with human agency. Talk that did not stem from a spiritual source is inadequate to comprehend spiritual truth (Bauman 1983:21). Silence is, therefore, a technique through which the subject shifts the “locus and character of religious speaking from outward, human speech to the inward spiritual speaking of God” (Bauman 1983:30). Quaker ministers are then under the same suspicion in regards to the authenticity of the divinely spoken words. Bauman asks the reader: The point at issue between the Quaker ministers and their priestly antagonists was fundamentally one of the legitimacy of religious speaking and the source of legitimate religious words. What is the nature of God’s Word in the practice of religion? How does one become a legitimate speaker of God’s Word? (1983:35) This search for “legitimate speaking” is the raison d’être for the Quaker ministers8 and their basis for authority, but the question of how one becomes a legitimate speaker of God’s Word is left unanswered. For the Quakers, ultimate and true spiritual enlightenment can only come through a direct personal experience of the Word of God speaking within oneself. The Scripture is, therefore, only legitimate as “historical validation of the patterns 8 Quakerism focuses not on the abolishment of polity but of laity: in other words, every individual, through divine inspiration, becomes ministers or preachers of God’s words. Park 28 and dynamics of their own charismatic prophetic mission” (1983:37-­‐38). Bauman’s reduction of this question of suspicion to a personal project is insufficient for our purposes, as we are more concerned with the expression of God’s words to others – whether it is minister’s preaching or the ASL interpreter’s delivery. Here, we are left in a cul-­‐de-­‐sac of an argument in which the legitimacy of one’s preaching (or divinely inspired speaking) is only validated against one’s godly ways of being (as explained in the Bible), but this answer does not fully address the uncertainty prevailing preaching, since everyone is a sinner and able to assert his or her own human agency. In other words, whether it is preaching or sign language interpretation, the uncertainty regarding the speech’s purity – how divine or how humanly imbued – is inevitable in one’s expression and reading of God’s word. A similar problematic is highlighted in the Friday Masowe Apostolics of Zimbabwe. This Pentecostal sect also emphasizes the personal, inner experience of God. Engelke explains that the Bible is only important for three aspects: its historical truth, its narrative coherence, and its religious relevance (2007:173). Thus, in this model, “the medium (the Bible) is not identical with the message (truth)” (Engelke 2007:174). So here we see an abandonment of the importance of the form of language. Words as they are written in the Bible do not have particularly immanent force in themselves. The question of importance for the Apostolics is God being present in the now. The Bible was a form through which the early disciples experienced God, but it is neither a way for salvation or direct experience of God – so representation is not as big an issue because ultimate experience with god should be a personal one. Park 29 While Quakerism and Friday Apostolics strongly emphasize personal experience and consider the Scripture only for its historical significance, the churches in my fieldwork (Reformed Baptist, Episcopalian, and Lutheran) emphasize the authority of the Bible in experiencing and knowing God. In fact, a preached sermon or a testimony of a believer is weighed against the Bible to determine if the uttered words are truly divinely inspired – as opposed to labeling God to otherwise human words or thoughts. Thus, while it is helpful to consider Bauman and Engelke’s ethnography, the sign language interpreters’ problem (of making sense of mistakes and constraints) calls for a different explanation. Pentecost Sunday: Allowing for Multiple Translations and Languages I now reflect back onto Pentecost Sunday of May 19th, 2013 when I visited a Lutheran church in central New Jersey. It was a small church of around 50 people, 8 of whom were deaf, seated at the front facing the ASL interpreter, and the rest were of diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds. After opening prayer and hymns, the reverend, presiding over the worship service, read from the church bulletin: The Old Testament Lesson comes from the eleventh chapter of Genesis verses one through nine. And as a [historical] background [of the Pentecost Day], language is a means of communication and understanding. With one language, the ancient people were united in building a tower to make a name for themselves. To make them humble, Yahweh confused their language to the point that they had to abandon what they were building. On Pentecost, the Spirit enabled the apostles to speak in the various languages for those assembled in Jerusalem. And again to catch somewhat the flavor of that Pentecost, verses one through four will be read by Edwin in Swahili, Inez verses Park 30 five through seven in Spanish, and Takaho verses eight and nine in Japanese… After the three read in their respective languages, the reverend gave a short sermon, which was then followed by The Epistle Lesson, or the reading of one of the Pauline letters of the Bible. This time, the second chapter of Acts was read in Zulu by one woman, signed in ASL by one of the Deaf members, and attempted in Koine Greek by the reverend who humorously mentioned that it has been “a few years since I read in Greek in seminary.” A month later, when I got more acquainted with the church congregation and was sitting down one-­‐on-­‐one with the reverend for an interview, I asked about this interesting multilingual part of the service. “Since it was Pentecost Sunday. It was the day that the disciples were able to understand different languages,” responded the reverend. “It was to get a flavor for what they were going through, and it also reflects the different cultures that we have.” As he explains, the beginning of Acts 2 reads as follows: When the day of Pentecost arrived, [the disciples] were all together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. (Acts 2:1-­‐4 ESV) Here, language is reduced to an object of God’s will. As explained in the Old Testament reading of the Babel Tower, it is God who created different and multiple languages, and the Epistle reveals that it is also God, the Spirit to be more precise, who enables understanding and usage of different languages, “giving them utterance.” Here, the Pentecost Sunday can be seen as the beginning of allowing for Park 31 multiple translations and linguistic forms. From interpretation to speaking in tongues, human beings are allowed to communicate in different languages, and language as a concept becomes that which does not limit God’s communication. In understanding the limitation of religious ASL interpretation and acknowledging the importance of staying true to the Word, the interpreters “prepare their hearts” before service with prayer and humility that God would intercede. My interlocutors used this term to illustrate the ways in which they get into the mindset of worship before interpretation. Also, I must note that many interpreters were not officially licensed professionals but volunteers who have been encouraged by the church to learn ASL. As a result, the interpreters’ prayer for the intercession of the Holy Spirit is also inflected by this acknowledgement that he or she is neither an expert signer nor a minister with formal training. In this sense of under-­‐qualification, there emerges both a respect for the power of language and God’s ultimate control over it. Through my interviews and participant-­‐observation with the ASL interpreters, it became clear to me that one cannot simply choose to subscribe either one of the two models of language: language as object and vehicle for expression of interiority versus language as having a force and social life of its own. My experience with the sign language interpreters has shown that there is a simultaneous recognition of both of these conceptions around language. In the interpreters’ everyday experience, language has a complicated existence in which it is both feared for its immanent capacity but at the same time freely utilized under the purview of providence. Park 32 This “preparing of heart” as well as sincerity and God’s omniscience are the terms through which the interpreters have addressed the dilemma and the problematic underlying interpretation. In the next chapter, I elaborate further on the notion of sincerity and God’s knowing; these two notions as expressed by the interpreters show how their semiotic ideology is laden with the readings of the Bible that both acknowledges the power of words and God’s transcendent authority over language. Park 33 4. Addressing the Dilemma: Sincerity Prologue In this chapter, I consider the notion of sincerity and its central importance in sign language interpreters making sense of the dilemma. In addition to all of the limitations of language as well as the underlying problem of skepticism (as to the presence of God in speech), the sign language interpreters minister to the congregation by “preparing their hearts” and being sincere in their interpretation and prayer. A closer look into the idea of sincerity will reveal the interpreter’s relationship to language as well as the wider Christian semiotic ideology implicated in their attitudes. My main focus, however, is in tracing how the interpreters view their own tasks and pitfalls and make observations on the specific words and concepts used in addressing their dilemma. Before I delve into my ethnographic interviews, I engage with Marcel Mauss’s treatise On Prayer (2003) and Ramie Targoff’s book Common Prayer: The Language of Public Devotion in Early Modern England (2001). Anthropology of religion and Christianity do not particularly focus on prayer itself as a topic, but the two mentioned writers engage with the notion of sincerity that I am also concerned with. By distinguishing sincere prayer from a rote and “empty” prayers, both writers engage with the materiality of language and its relationship to the speaker’s sincerity. The engagement with these anthropological texts will show an interesting parallel to my ethnography and broaden our reading into the sign language interpreters’ dilemma. Park 34 Mauss and Targoff: Anthropology of Prayer Durkheim’s classic Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912) analyzes religion as a social phenomenon, tracing the development from “primitive” and collective religious activities to a more modern version of individual-­‐centered one. Marcel Mauss’s On Prayer (2003, an unfinished draft published posthumously, follows a similar vein of thought in social development. Mauss sees prayer as a “rite because it is an assumed attitude – an action carried out with regard to sacred things” (Mauss 2003:22). He argues that religion originally consisted of “mechanical rite of a precise and material nature, of strictly formulated beliefs composed almost exclusive of tangible images” (2003:23). In the course of its history, the focus would shift to the conscious or the sol rather than the body. He cites the Semitic religions (of Syria and Palestine) and the first centuries of the Christian religion as examples of his development: prayers of strict liturgical and traditional type would eventually give way to “free” and “individual expressions” of prayer – and “this on the account of the poetic qualities that were attributed to prayer” (2003:26). Although he acknowledges that the development of prayer is not an uninterrupted ascent, he believes that his “analysis of primitive forms” will prove to be an essential guiding hypothesis for religious rituals and prayer. E.E. Evans-­‐
Pritchard’s anthropology into the Nuer society (1950s) can perhaps also be seen in light of this Maussian model. Evans-­‐Pritchard asserts that sacrificial worship to ancestors becomes a way of seeing them as intermediaries between humans and gods. Mauss would argue that this type of ritual would eventually give way to Park 35 prayer, characterized by the omission of intermediaries and direct, personal communication with the divine. Although I do not take his theory at face value, it will be interesting to observe how Mauss’s development theory is fleshed out in my interlocutor’s view on prayer and sincerity. Sincerity, as implied by my interlocutors, emphasizes the shift away from reiterating prescribed or otherwise “foreign” words. Instead, sincere prayers would be “from the heart” or be original expressions by the individual. Before I go any further, Ramie Targoff’s discussion of English common prayers reveals how this idea of sincerity was central to the Catholic and Protestant debate on what constituted sincere prayers. Although Catholic semiotic ideology and Protestant ideology cannot be neatly divided into the dichotomy of prescribed, collective liturgy versus vernacular, individual expression, I present this generalization as a tool for considering the multiple facets of sincerity. In fact, the main arc of Targoff’s argument is to take a revisionist approach to this binary and present the early English period’s interest in cultivating public and formalized models of worship – her work’s focus is in understanding the origins of devotional poetry and how new literary practices became intertwined with forging common prayer. Nevertheless, this underlying dichotomy (which Targoff is trying to complicate or at least blur) is at the heart of my interlocutors’ understanding of sincere prayer and worship. Targoff explains that the Catholic Latin liturgy “accurately conveys the anxiety in the pre-­‐Reformation church over the unauthorized spreading of the English word” (2001:20). On the other hand, Protestant worship would emphasize Park 36 “true knowledge” by all individuals, thereby eliminating ritualistic liturgies like raising of the Host and shift away from the register of visual to the auditory (2001:22-­‐23). This Protestant idea of sincerity is based on personal expressions and individual interaction with God or the Scripture. This shift can also be read as a break away from materiality of language and putting the emphasis on the interiority of the speaker. This understanding of sincerity will be interesting to consider in my interlocutors’ words, as specific words, signs, or even mistakes become less important than the interiority and the intentions of the interpreter. In the Interpreters’ Words: Case Studies This theme of “what is in your heart” has been central to my interlocutors’ explanation of how they make sense of the linguistic dilemma as well as limitations in interpretation. The foil between their expressions and the abovementioned discussion on Protestant sincerity will be interesting to consider in taking a closer look into my interlocutors words. David David is a seminary student in his 50s and is also a faculty at the Helen Keller National Center, where he helps deaf-­‐blind youths and adults with occupational therapy. He is also a close friend of the St. Ann’s Church, where he often volunteers as a sign language interpreter for services and other events. The following is his Park 37 response to the question, “What is the most important for you in interpreting? That you convey the right words or that the Deaf understand the message?” He writes, I’m not responsible for the congregants understanding anything. That’s a tricky thing. I’m responsible for delivering an equivalent message. But if that message is not accessible to the deaf… The nature of language is very fragile. The fact is that I can’t. I don’t have any idea whether the deaf person is really going to understand. But I know their response. I will adjust it to the point that the person is going to understand it. I can’t really be responsible for that. It is “not my problem” if they don’t get it. So to answer the question, it’s neither. I will try to understand her words, intent, and context. And I might interpret it in the exact [form]. Most intent on understanding what the speaker says. When I’m interpreting math, I can put it out. I can interpret without understanding. I’m just putting it out. I’m hoping vocab is correct, but I don’t understand it. Some of it depends on what register you’re in. or what source you’re in. Here, I wish to highlight the oscillation between the two poles of the dilemma. After mentioning the importance of “delivering an equivalent message” then talking the importance of “adjusting to understand,” David comes to the conclusion that it is “neither.” In his words, one can see that the interpreter is separated from the weight of language. The mistakes and limitations in language are acknowledged, but sincerity becomes the most important factor in interpretation. The faith in God to oversee language exchanges is what enables the interpreters to volunteer, despite the mistakes that they make and the risk of distorting the message for the sake of prioritizing the congregation’s understanding. I asked David, “What is the most important in prayer?” He continued, “My affect, my intention, my sincerity… No can’t be any of these things. That I Park 38 communicate with God.” Reproduced below is his response to my next question, “How about the times that language inhibits communication?” I don’t find language inhibiting. I pray inside my head. When I’m thinking, I’m attaching some kind of language. I don’t see language as inhibiting to the process. I rely on language spoken internally or externally to… I don’t pray without language. I’m verbal in that respect. It could even be ASL but it’s words or signs… In seminary, when we sing the psalms and read language, that inhibits my spiritually – like the language [imagery] of fighting as an army – corporate language can be inhibiting. If it’s just rote prayer, that really isn’t prayer. The intention behind my asking of the question was to understand how the interpreters express their limitations in regards to language. What ties both David’s responses (one on interpretation and one on his prayer) is the idea of sincere intentions. His sincerity in his words, prayers, and interpretation become the way in which he addresses the dilemma, the limitations, and the mistakes. Rev. Buzzard This response is an extract from my interview with Rev. Henry Buzzard. Here, I did not use a pseudonym – with his permission – because of his historical importance in the Deaf community and my respect for him in furthering religious education for the Deaf. In addition, his biographic information and his published works are publically available through the web and the archives of the Gallaudet University. Born in 1923, Rev. Buzzard passed away in March 2014 at the age of 90. He was diagnosed as deaf at the age of 2, and learned to speak clearly and lip-­‐read at Park 39 the Central Institute for the Deaf (CID) in St. Louis, MO. After graduating from Wabash University with a degree in chemistry, Rev. Buzzard worked as a cataloger in the Library of Gallaudet University, where he also published a book on Thomas Gallaudet. After working as a librarian and historian at various schools, Henry became ordained an Episcopal Priest in 1997. He served the St. Ann’s Church for the Deaf until health issues forced his retirement in 2004. St. Ann’s lay leader Erin introduced him as the only deaf-­‐blind minister in America. His eyesight had deteriorated with his age, and he was completely blind in one eye with minimal sight remaining in the other. Although Rev. Buzzard was trained in the oral tradition, his health made it difficult for him to lip-­‐read or speak clearly. Thus, this interview was done in sign language, with much help from Erin the lay leader – who is also deaf but an excellent lip-­‐reader. I asked Rev. Buzzard if limitations in language affect prayer. “I don’t know. Church uses big words and the deaf ignores that. It’s difficult for them,” He responded. “Limit in language affect spiritual language. It’s a problem. But still God – Through Deaf people and through hearing people… I depend on the Holy Spirit.” He continues, There is limit in our communication with God but no limit in God’s communication with us. I wish there were more people in the church to talk with God. They speak many languages. God knows all languages – inside language, too. He then continued to explain that this limitation is the exact reason why we must trust in God. Human interaction and thoughts are full of frailties that have limitations in expressing the Truth (of the gospel). Reliance on God is the essential Park 40 element in ministering, and in the case of the sign language interpreters this reliance is expressed by sincere efforts. Raymond The volunteer interpreter and bible study leader, Raymond, also emphasized the importance of sincerity in addressing the problem of language interpretation: I don’t think that makes a difference b/c he knows our hearts. And if we’re making sincere efforts, He knows what I’m trying to sign. Even if I mess up… Even if I’m interpreting and I’m tired and my mind can’t work and I miss some things. And it’s harder in the evening. I’m comforted knowing that God will help the Deaf – in helping them understand in as much as he [the deaf] can understand. They’ll understand as much as he wants them to. God’s sovereignty. Youngest child learning sign language is struggling but God understands. I’ll just pray, “help.” “Help me to sign accurately what the pastor is saying” and “not what I’m saying.” If not because of me, then in spite of me. [During] certain sermons, my hands are going for a few minutes. I don’t even know what I’m doing. I’m in tune but I’m not consciously thinking but my signs are going. He was preaching so fast, my hands were flying I don’t know how I kept up. But I felt like God was taking over. Raymond’s sincerity is beautifully encapsulated by the phrase, “If not because of me, then in spite of me.” Upon his role as an interpreter ministering to the Deaf, there is the recognition that his (human) efforts will, at times, fail. The congregation’s edification, for both the Deaf and the hearing, is ultimately in God’s hands. Raymond continues, We’re to do all things for god’s glory. We’re to do our best in everything because we’re doing it for God. God sees all the details. It’s more important to me that I do my best because God sees everything. If there’s hard words how am I gonna sign. If there are no signs for theological words, how am I going to explain it to them? To help the deaf understand is very important but what’s more important is that God sees. Park 41 He also shared me a prayer that he prays to prepare his heart before interpreting for worship services. Referring to the previous Sunday when he was not given sermon notes in advance, Raymond prayed, “God, I’m lost. I am tired, and my hands aren’t working properly… God help the Deaf. Use me to help them understand. It’s not about me looking good for other people…” In explaining his prayer, he told me that there is the constant temptation to see interpretation as a pride issue. First few weeks, he was trying to impress other people. “Me, as an interpreter, I knew that other interpreters who have far greater vocab are in the pews watching me,” Raymond said. “The first few times, I was trying to impress the rest of the church. I see a blurb. [Now I realize that] I’m just there for the Deaf who are there; those are the people I’m ministering to…” Prayer Not for God but for Us? In this section, I have traced sincerity as an important notion in Protestant prayer and worship. This notion of sincerity was also the genre of terms through which the interpreters addressed their limitations and dilemma. In addition, it is clear how the linguistic dilemma is not confined to the sign language interpretation. There are physical constraints in changing from one linguistic modality to another, but the same problem underlies the hearing congregants as well as the ministers. Rev. Dan of the Lutheran Church explained it thus, “… As long as the prayer is to the triune God. As long as they’re sincere about what they’re praying. As long as they’re not just empty phrases. Jesus said to the Pharisees to not to pray with empty Park 42 words…” The passage that the reverend refers to is Matthew 6:7, “And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words” (ESV). In Rev. Dan’s words, one can see a semiotic ideology in which God transcends language. He writes, The Holy Spirit takes over for size so deep for words. Even I think sometimes just in sighs and in groans. God knows what we’re trying to say. As the bible shows, He knows our thoughts before we even utter them. It’s not so much God needs our prayers in order to know what our needs are, but more for our benefit – for us to express our needs to Him. Rev. Brand’s reversal of the purpose of prayer presents us an interesting new perspective, in which the words of prayer (and by extension, the interpretation efforts) do not limit the experience of worship or the interiority of the speaker. In other words, the form of prayer and signs themselves do not limit human communication with God. Park 43 5. Concluding Remarks My thesis began with my interest to better understand the materiality of prayer and its relation to sincerity and meaning. For the Deaf who pray not with words but with hands, I had wondered how this change in materialistic form might change the experience of worship. Then, I eventually became interested in the sign language interpreters, who find themselves in the middle of this transition from one linguistic modality (hearing and spoken English) to another (ASL). The interpreters must serve God as well as the Deaf congregation, and at the heart of this ministry is the dilemma of prioritization (Chapter 1). If the interpreter transliterates the Bible or the preacher’s words, there is the problem of incommensurability in language translation as well as physical constraints underlying sign language interpretation, such as reading levels of the Deaf, breakdown of metaphors, as well as interpretation speed and interpreters’ level of fluency. On the other hand, if the interpreter is to prioritize the Deaf congregants’ understanding, they run the risk of unauthorized distortion of God’s message. In focusing the dilemma of the sign language interpreters, I have also tried to draw a parallel to the wider problem of translation within Christianity. In trying to dealing with the dilemma, the interpreters find themselves in a space where there are constant risks of making mistakes or misrepresenting the intended words (Chapter 2). Then, by comparing Quakerism and Friday Masowe Apostolics, I raise the issue of how does a speaker become positioned in relation to divine speaking. There is a constant suspicion for both the preacher and the Park 44 interpreter that the said words might not be fully divinely inspired but tainted with human agency. This problem of authority and ownership of language is too big a question to be answered within the purview of this research. Instead, I attend to how the interpreters make sense of this dilemma and limitation. By focusing on the terms that are used by the interpreters, I look at the way in which the notion of sincerity is at the heart of the way in which the interpreters address the dilemma and possibilities of mistakes (Chapter 3). This dilemma and constraints in language lay on the shoulders of the interpreters as heavy burdens. Especially as volunteers, who did not have formal training in theology or ASL, my interlocutor interpreters have expressed their humility in the absolute need to “pray and prepare [their] hearts.” Withstanding all of the problems outlined above, I asked Raymond how he is able to go up every Sunday and interpret the service. “I always struggled with stuttering,” says Raymond. “I guess that’s why I sometimes feel more comfortable in signing because I don’t stutter that way. I would never pray in public, but men are called to pray and God doesn’t mind [the stutter or the faults in interpretation].” In the interpreters’ words, sincerity is the key to overcoming the constraints of language. To an omniscient God, what need to be communicated are not specific forms of language but sincere efforts. 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