Translating the Deaf Self: engagement and exploration through artistic transformations

The 'Translating the Deaf Self' project, funded through the AHRC Translating Cultures Research Innovation Grant Scheme, involved a multilingual and cross-cultural team of Deaf and hearing researchers who examined, for the first time, the impact on wellbeing, agency and identity of a consistent and life-long experience of Deaf people being known through interpreters. This situation arises, not because someone is Deaf, but because the majority community is, in most aspects, not an accessible one through a signed language. Therefore interpreters are a fact of everyday life. The Deaf self is mediated on an everyday basis and identity becomes both known and performed through the interpreted self in the vast majority of interactions

Essentially, the project focused on exploring how deaf people feel about being known through translation as a perpetual state of being (do they feel they are really seen?), how this experience impacts on their wellbeing, how others (i.e., hearing people) perceive Deaf people when they only communicate with them through interpreters (do they feel they really know them?), and how interpreters feel about representing Deaf people to ensure that they are known by others.

In sum, we found that the recognition of the nature of the translated Deaf self varied according to each stakeholder group, but essentially that the interrogation of this concept was innovative and of interest to all participants. We also found that when disseminating the research findings in British Sign Language and engaging in further discussion with members of the British Deaf community, more questions were generated with a clear motivation to participate in dialogue about the concept of the Translated Deaf Self.

This Follow-on-Funding will enable the project team to engage further with British Deaf community groups about the concept of the Translated Deaf Self, but in a creative rather than academic way; with a shift in the balance of power from academic/research control to community-based control - opening up new possibilities for the co-creation of the scope, nature and significance of the Translated Deaf Self in everyday practices.

We will curate 4 deaf artists-in-residence located in 4 different places with collaborating public and third sector partner organisations for a one-off contained period of time to observe how deaf and hearing people interact via interpreters. The artists will then create visual art products to represent the concept of the Translated Deaf Self. The artists will generate opportunities for dialogue with local Deaf communities about their perceptions of the Translated Deaf Self to guide their artistic processes, and will organise small scale exhibitions within each host organisation, before we bring all the artists and all their artistic products together in one central exhibition at the Deaf Cultural Centre in Birmingham, which is a hub for the Deaf Arts Network. The final exhibition will be in place for one month, but all the art works will also be represented digitally on a bespoke website along with video clips featuring descriptions of the project and the artwork in British Sign Language, in order to involve transnational Deaf communities in on-going consideration of notions of representation of the Translated Deaf Self.

This Follow-on project will be co-located across two related AHRC themes: Translating Cultures and Care for the Future exploring Deaf communities' values and beliefs about the Translated Deaf Self through visual and artistic means in order to understand future challenges and contributions for Deaf sign language users.

The primary goals of this project are to involve a greater number and heterogeneity of Deaf community members in considering and contributing to the impact of our preliminary work on Translating the Deaf Self. That project asked what the consequences were for Deaf people of being known 'in translation' through interpreters in terms of agency, wellbeing and identity. In this project we use the visual arts medium to bring these ideas alive to a wider consistency of stakeholders through the creation and curation of 4 Deaf artists in residence in different contexts where the experience of being known through sign language interpreters is both topical and enduring. These include a third sector social care organisation serving some of the most socially excluded Deaf people in the UK; a political arena concerned with the public sector implications of the BSL Scotland Act 2015; and an educational environment, both formally through an HEI and informally through a Deaf organisation's social educational activities. A primary impact will be to create the conditions for including a wide diversity of Deaf and hearing individuals and organisations in the 'conversation' about the impact and effects for all of indirect communication at personal, professional and structural levels in the everyday lives of Deaf people including the losses to mainstream and dominant language contexts who may fail to be able to see or utilise Deaf contribution and talent. This reframes the more common assumption that interpreters are 'for' Deaf people rather than for all and that interpreters signal dependency rather than enabling representation and participation, whether one is hearing or Deaf. The prominence of Deaf artists and a Deaf-led social enterprise as delivery partner alongside the academic community generates its own impact in showcasing the potential of the Deaf-visual creative medium to open up new means of engagement and response to conceptually complex ideas that crosses any language barriers. The legacy web site will include a means of continual access and response to the art works and their association with social, personal political and organisational impacts of consistently being known in translation by a majority community. The encounter exhibitions through the course of the project and final art show will provide opportunities for the posting of digital comment from the general public, whether in British Sign Language or written language to take forward the conversation about whether and how consistent experiences of being known in translation through sign language interpreters may or may not be constitutive of culture. Fundamentally this project shifts the balance of power and ownership of these ideas from the academic to the user communities through the means of engagement and activity within situated contexts of diverse Deaf experiences and contact zones with 'hearing' socio-political structures.