Interpret teaching and teach interpreting: positions assumed in the interpretative act in mainstream contexts for deaf people

Abstract

The goal of this article is to present some descriptions about the educational interpreter performance in the context of a mainstream school, more specifically in the 7th grade with four deaf students included, in which a bilingual project has being carried out. Relying on the assumption that inclusion forces interpreters to activate pedagogical practices during the interpretative act, this investigation payed attention to two phenomena: by one hand, the constructions of temporal spaces in the classroom that claim ties and partnerships between interpreters and teachers, beyond the technical interpretation itself. By the other hand, the configurations regarding interpretative decisions making emerged from pedagogical happenings. The data analysis indicates that there is a switch between the “interpreter-positon” and the “master-position”, being the last activated by the interpreter inner desire in creating ties and connections with deaf students in their learning process; and the former position, as an effect of the interpreter´s own challenges faced daily, in linguistic, cognitive, referential, and physical terms.