Advice To Fake Sign Language Interpreters

Personally, I wouldn’t recommend taking a job as a sign language interpreter if you don’t know sign language. That’s just me. However, if you are going to do that, I might suggest that you not try to pull it off at an event as high-profile as Nelson Mandela’s memorial.

I’m sure you’ve all heard about this, how the sign language interpreter (Thamsanqa Jantjie) at Nelson Mandela’s memorial was apparently just making stuff up, waving his hands around. This has caused a pretty big stink.

Personally, I’d think you’d test somebody before hiring a sign language interpreter. If you don’t know sign language, find someone you trust who does to do the test. If you are going to try to fake something like this, perhaps an event that won’t be closely scrutinized by the entire world would be a better bet.

Just saying.

Of course, Thamsanqa Jantjie has made statements that he does know sign language and has successfully translated for other high-profile events. He claims that he suffered from a schizophrenic attack during the event. This would change the situation a bit, but perhaps if it is true then he shouldn’t have been without a backup for an event of this kind. Once he knew he was having this kind of problem, or once someone trained to monitor realized, perhaps the backup should have stepped in.

Besides…even if he was hallucinating, did he not hear any of what he was supposed to translate? Just saying he was hallucinating leaves me with questions as to why almost none (if any) of what he did turned out to actually be sign language. Simply waving one’s hands was not the way to handle this situation, especially one he had experienced frequently before.

Really, I don’t know what the situation here really was. I have a feeling that this is going to get weirder before everything finally settles. Frankly, it’s already pretty weird.