Morning!Hope you're all doing well today. First, a bit more about strategies to exert control over interpreting processes. One other strategy to do so in addition to the ones I discussed yesterday, is making choices regarding or at least be concious of interpreters’ gender. 1/

For me, as a deaf woman academic, this means I sometimes, if possible at all, choose to work with male interpreters. Some of my designated interpreters are men. TBH this also just happens because I often work with International Sign interpreters, and many of them are men. 2/

In a profession that is still predominantly female (in the national SL interpreting field, 80% are women) and becomes increasingly male in higher status situations (conference interpreting, IS interpreting, tv interpreting), working with male interpreters is a sensitive issue. 3/

Often colleagues, including some sign language interpreters, do not understand why I, as a woman, would want to work with male interpreters, and assume I always, by default, prefer a gender matched, i.e. female, voice. No, I don’t. 4/

First of all, an interpreter is not my ‘voice’. An interpreter translates back and forth what I am saying. My voice is my own. 5/

Second, a voice of a different gender sometimes helps to make people aware that there is effectively an interpreting process happening. For example when people see a woman signing and another woman speaking they might be confused about who is who. 6/

. @AnneliesKusters and @JeminaNapier wrote a good blog about a female deaf academic working with a female sign language interpreter at an academic conference. Check it out: https://mobiledeaf.org.uk/on-audio/  7/

Third, a male voice can, in some situations, help to be heard and assert confidence. The intonation of men is different, they can talk over other men (believe me, I need that more than I want to!), they make different word choices and people’s perception of them is different. 8/

Because communication through interpreters is *already* unequal, a male interpreter can sometimes help to redress the balance. Of course there is the issue (one would say privilege?) that I CAN deliberately choose to work with male interpreters, and I'm aware of that. 9/

This does not mean I choose male interpreters by default, or that male interpreters are per definition better! They are not. And in some contexts it’s perfectly possible and warranted to strategically choose female interpreters, also for male deaf colleagues. 10/

This might all look like interpreters are always there for me to choose from depending on the context. Unfortunately, this is not true. Having a designated interpreter *at all* is more often an issue for me (and for many deaf professionals) than having a specific gender one. 11/

I’m working on a blog gender and sign language interpreting for @acadeafic with @AnneliesKusters so there is more to come! 12/

Deaf colleagues out there, what are some of the strategies you use for successfully working with sign language interpreters? And what do sign language interpreters think of these strategies? #1ntSL /end