Sign Language Interpreters: A Demographic Survey

Although the number of sign language interpreters has increased dramatically during the past decade, there has been no formal attempt as yet to investigate their characteristics. It is quite likely that clusters of such characteristics, when correlated with performance, proficiency, and aptitude measures, will yield invaluable information for screening, training, and evaluating interpreters. This paper reports on the results of a demographic survey of 160 interpreters-not a large number, and so the results are preliminary and any conclusions drawn from them should be considered tentative in nature. The data were collected by using a specially designed questionnaire. The majority of responses were collected at the 1980 Convention of the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf (RID) in Cincinnati, Ohio. Ten major categories of information were elicited by the questionnaire: