I have fallen in love with swearing. No, really. I think its a dying artform and its greatly misunderstood by interpreters, and the general public. No other aspect of language is so intertwined with our emotions and rules of social interaction – profanity can not be looked at in a vacuum. I love it when its complicated and constantly shifting.
Many years ago, when we were told to figure out a research topic during my Interpreter Training Program (ITP), I wasn’t serious at first. I couldn’t imagine that a cutting edge profanity study would be useful. I thought that maybe I would find some gender differences and wouldn’t that be neat?
Well I found a whole lot more than that – Interpreters, in general, don’t know how to handle profanity. Their gender and years of experience are almost irrelevant. Experiencing profanity doesn’t happen in a soley conscious way – much of our perception of profanity is realized on a subconscious, gut level.
Though my shareshops, interpreters are given tools to bring their understanding of profanity up to a conscious level and as a group we develop strategies for their toolbox for the next time they have to face those four little letters. As an attendee from the Canadian National conference said, we “made it a safe place to try something outside my comfort level.”
For 2009/2010, I am available for workshops. Please see the list below to see where I am scheduled and headed this year. The research from 2008 has been submitted to the Journal of Interpreting and I am waiting to hear whether they are going to accept my submission.
As one shareshop attendee from Kansas said “I came here thinking I would learn some vocabulary, but I left with something much better – I learned how to handle profanity instead.”
If your organization is interested in having this topic presented to your membership, please contact me via e-mail, kemurphy00@yahoo.com.
Future Shareshops
February 3-6th, 2010 – Supporting Deaf People Online Conference
