Story Archive

Your Life May Depend on Your Attention to this Message

In the runup to Hurricane Irma hitting Florida, the Manatee County Emergency Operations Center went on TV to update citizens on what to do. An American Sign Language interpreter shared the screen with officials to provide the warnings to deaf viewers, too. “We were just shocked” at what the interpreter signed, says Clemson University Prof. Jason Hurdich, who apparently unlike the interpreter on TV, is actually qualified to be an ASL interpreter. The onscreen interpreter’s performance was “horrible and embarrassing.” Officials say the interpreter is a local lifeguard, and was the only one available to them. Viewers who understand ASL say his message was “incoherent and incomplete,” but they could pick out some words, like “pizza” and “monsters,” and, he noted, “help you at that time to use bear big.” (RC/Bradenton Herald, WFLA Tampa) ...The lifeguard can now go back to his regular side job: standing in front of an orchestra with a baton and waving his arms around randomly.