American Sign Language helps save lives
Hunter Merck, staff writer
Photo courtesy of pixabay.com
The certified deaf interpreter for Nikki Haley’s message during Hurricane Matthew to the hearing impaired has been called “the greatest sign language guy ever.”
The video of Jason Hurdich signing to a group of people in the state of emergency has circulated Facebook and is amazing people all over. The deaf community is proud that they are being represented in such an outstanding way.
Hurdich is one of around two hundred certified deaf interpreters in the United States. During the message, a hearing interpreter was present and signing to Hurdich, while he then interpreted with vivid facial expressions to help the deaf and hearing impaired community fully understand the emergency at hand. “The CDI [certified deaf interpreter] is needed to ensure that the technical language that is being spoken is conveyed at a level that all viewers can understand,” said ASL instructor, Shannon Fike.
Haley commended Hurdich for his immense efforts to help communicate the situation. CDI’s are used very rarely, usually only in cases of emergency. Those who are deaf or hearing impaired all know English at varying levels, so he brought Haley’s message down to a level that was easy to understand, but also emphasized the danger of the coming hurricane. Fike said, “Many of the things that are spoken do not have direct sign language equivalencies and if the hearing interpreter simply finger spells the words, and made an attempt to explain them, they may or may not get the concept correct.”
“Some [news outlets] aren’t working on closed captioning so its good that they have interpreters on TV,” said Trei Turmon. CDIs like Hurdich are important because they are able to communicate at a level that all deaf people can understand and he was expressive in things that needed more emphasis to convey the seriousness of Haley’s message.
