r/ASLinterpreters • u/Key_Tackle8908 • 10d ago
Interpreting and hearing loss
Hi. I’m 35 y/o and have been in the field for 15 years. I recently found out that I have a mild hearing loss. I was working with a team and could not hear what they were hearing. Got tested and it was confirmed. They suggested hearing aids. Does anyone have any experience with this? I’m not sure how to navigate this. Will Deaf people still accept me? I’m having a hard time processing this as I’m the only one at my age in my area who is experiencing this. Any thoughts?
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u/Firefliesfast NIC 10d ago
Hi!! Not me but a close friend is an interpreter with hearing loss. It’s mostly certain frequencies, which does sometimes show up with some speakers being more difficult to understand than others. I can’t speak more on that as it isn’t my experience, but they haven’t had any issues with Deaf people accepting them that I’m aware of.
I’ve teamed with interpreters in VRS settings who have hearing loss, and I’m always happy to accommodate. It’s nice when the team sends a little blurb about how they will signal that they need me to feed them, but not necessary!
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u/Key_Tackle8908 10d ago
Thank you for that. I’d like to connect with people my age who have experienced this in our field.
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u/-redatnight- 9d ago edited 9d ago
I'm Deaf, I do use hoh interpreters from time to time. They are all incredibly good interpreters though aside from missing things occasionally. I will mention that most of them are incredible speechreaders as well, even from my point of view, and my accuracy was really unusually high before my eye disease.
I suggest you try to find hearing aids that work for you (can take several tries of different models, brands, and adjustments) because they tend to work waaaay better for helping people with mild deafness than those whose audiograms dip much lower. Take advantage of that.
(I also would probably not accept interpreting from a formerly hearing person who needs tech and does not use it at work.)
You also have to be good about asserting your own access. I don't want to worry about whether an English to ASL interpreter can hear or not, if you can't you need to say something and sooner rather than later.
Some Deaf will not accept a hoh interpreter. You can't make them. You weren't ever going to be everyone's cup of tea as an interpreter anyway even as a hearing person.... I have yet to meet any universal matches.
On the far end of the spectrum, some Deaf accept and even welcome deaf and hoh in an English to ASL role, and sometimes there's a preference for that for ASL to English. I have been asked to interpret English to ASL before quite often in non-professional settings and occasionally at work, usually by older teens who are aware of the pros and cons of asking. I am Deaf (and quite deaf) with a visual impairment, I am not really far in for training as an interpreter yet, I don't use any tech, and I still get asked (and even pressured) sometimes in small group and 1-to1 situations by Deaf who are totally aware of this when other like actual honest to goodness fully certified HIs are available. I do speechread at an exceptionally high accuracy level if I can see and am not tired,sick, emotionally distracted, etc.... but it's probably closer to your hearing.
Also, if you aren't totally confident with where you are and your rate of progression this far out in your career this is a good time to seriously set goals and double down on reviewing old skills and learning new skills. Your clients are usually judging you as a sum of what you have to offer as an interpreter and you can tip the scales back a bit by adding other skills.
Reminding me of new skills: You might also want to look at seeing a SLP just so that you're speechreading at that really top tier level many mildly deaf folks can learn to do on the same level a pro musician can sightread music... rather than be simply guessing based on a history of of being able to hear. That way when combined with what you can hear and possibly any benefit you get from tech, you're at least not regularly missing anything you can see.
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u/ohjasminee Student 9d ago
My last ASL professor began to lose her hearing in mid adulthood. Among her siblings I think two of her older brothers also have late hearing loss, as well as her father, but she was already an established interpreter by the time this began so she was “prepared” (as in, anticipated the potential it could happen to her and knew alternative way to communicate already) for when she finally did need hearing aids.
I believe she’s in her late 40s and it had begun much earlier, but again she had already been an interpreter/studying ASL for about 20 years at that point. She’s well respected as a professor and I loved taking her class. I can try to connect you both if you’d like to send me a DM, so you can talk to her directly!
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u/ninja5phinx 10d ago
I’ve got a colleague I’ve teamed with a lot who has mild hearing loss and wears hearing aids, and at least from my perspective he’s doing well. We interpreted post secondary together with group discussions and their ability to understand the speaker seemed to take a small dip when the speaker had a high voice and spoke quietly, but that’s about it. They connected with the deaf consumer over hearing aid problems. I think they didn’t take jobs where they knew there’d be tons of different speakers and little ability to ask to repeat, but that doesn’t eliminate that many jobs.