Educational Interpreters And Early Childhood Development Training By Sam Freeman

The article “Educational Interpreters and Early Childhood Development Training” by Sam Freeman examines the needed skills for one to be an interpreter in primary schools. This topic has become extremely important, especially with the increase of job positions for educational interpreters and the lack of trained interpreters in the field. This article suggests that primary school interpreters need to be highly skilled, as the interpreter is setting up the child’s success in school. Along with this argument are examples and techniques of how to properly interpret in a classroom setting. Freeman believes that interpreters lack the skills to understand the context of classroom settings, and cannot properly perform dynamic equivalence. This means the deaf students are not receiving the experience as the hearing students. Educational interpreters need to have background in the field of early childhood education in order to properly understand the purpose behind the teacher’s words. Always telling the students what the teacher means is not going to help impact them the way it impacts hearing students. Teachers are trained to say things in ways that challenge the students’ thinking and require them to process questions in a different way. An example of this is

I had never looked further into the requirements of being an educational interpreter. Before now, I had never realized the importance of the primary school years. Since so many deaf children are born to hearing parents, it would be vital for me, as the interpreter, to introduce the child to ASL until they are exposed to the deaf community. It is also important that I understand the tactics of the teachers so I can impact the deaf student, and allow them to be as successful as their hearing counterparts. I now realize that being an interpreter in the primary years will really influence the child’s success in later