Carol Padden is professor of Communication and Interim Vice Chancellor of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion at the University of California, San Diego. Along with members of her research group, she has been investigating a new sign language used in a community of deaf and hearing Bedouins in southern Israel. Their work explores how language arises in a closed community and changes as it is transmitted across generations of signers.  She has written numerous academic and popular articles about sign language grammar, fingerspelling and comparative sign language structure across different sign languages. With Tom Humphries, she is the co-author of two books on culture and community of deaf people in the United States and two ASL textbooks, A Basic Course in ASL and Learning ASL.  Her work has been supported by the US Department of Education, the Spencer Foundation, the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health. In 2010, she received a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in recognition of her creative and innovative research.

Talk

Do Sign Language Interpreter Accents Compromise Comprehension?

Carol’s talk will establish that there is indeed accents in sign language and therefore interpreters need to consider “voice coaches” if they want to deliver clear interpretations on the public stage.

Workshop

Voice Coaching: Why it is Important to the Success of a Sign Language Interpreter

This workshop will examine the effects of an “accent” in a sign language interpreter’s work and why interpreters would benefit from incorporating “voice-coaching” into their training and development.