Country Report: Germany, BGSD

Bundesverband der GebärdensprachdolmetscherInnen Deutschlands e.V.
(National Association of German Sign Language Interpreters)

Facts about Germany

Germany comprises an area of 357.000 km2 with a population of about 80 million people. Given a percentage of 0,01 % of congenitally deaf people, it is assumed that about 80.000 deaf people live in Germany. By a wider definition, the number of hearing impaired people probably amounts to about 180.000 (not including those who suffer from hearing impairment due to old age). Most of the Deaf tend to live in bigger cities like Hamburg, Bremen, Hannover, Berlin, Cologne, Essen, Leipzig, Dresden, Frankfurt, Stuttgart and Munich. The largest deaf population is said to be in the capital, Berlin.

There are approximately 460 sign language interpreters working in Germany, some full-time, some part-time, we don’t have exact data about the percentage yet. As legal changes have been implemented, deaf people’s demands for interpreters have increased. More and more interpreters complete a formal interpreter training course, so the number of full-time interpreters (most of them free-lance) is likely to grow every year.

The Federal Association of Sign Language Interpreters (BGSD) represents about 400 interpreters, about 75% of all sign language interpreters in Germany. Interpreters in 13 of 16 Federal States are organized in their own regional associations, some Federal States have two regional associations. We still have individual members who are not regionally organized.
In Germany there are now three full-time training programmes for sign language interpreters at degree level, (University of Hamburg, University of Applied Sciences Magdeburg, University of Applied Sciences Zwickau); other part-time courses allow interpreters, who already have some work experience to prepare for an interpreting exam, the so-called “Staatliche Prüfung”. By passing the exam they obtain a certification from the State as Sign Language Interpreters “approved by the State”.

University programmes run for three and a half years full-time starting from scratch, part-time training programmes run over two or three years, but include the prerequisite of good Sign Language competence. Contents of training programmes cover a wide range of issues, often the same as Sign Language interpreter curricula in Scandinavian countries. It is not possible to give a short description of the contents. In case of further interest contact our Board.

Most important events for our association in the past year

We are still not finished dealing with representatives of  national health insurance organisations (concerning the area of interpreting fees for doctors’ appointments)- you may have read this here for some years, well- we still struggle with them. As a law has been changed here as of the 1/1/2008, we are now in a much better position and should earn 55 Euros per hour for every doctor’s appointment plus travel fares (before it was around 40 Euros an hour). Conditions like team work and cancellation though are still on the table and must be fought for.

We have established a new working group on the topic of mentoring, as well as a working group whose aim is to form a sort of court in case of members’ misbehaviour. Both groups have been working thoroughly and we should have had a meeting of mentors and mentees, which unfortunately had to be cancelled as there were too few mentors volunteering.

We undertook and still undertake meetings with a big association of spoken language interpreters, evaluating whether we should become a member of them (they have more than 4000 members), as they have a lot of contacts in government which could be useful to us. We are going to decide on this on our second meeting (AGM) in October 2008.

In order to improve the status of all sign language interpreters throughout Germany, we held our first meeting with only state members in June, trying to focus on federal laws and the areas where we must strive to get more equal rights for our customers (and therefore, us).

Dealing with quality standards as in the theme of the last year, we are still struggling with the standards of our own members as well as of future members, as nearly all our trainings will turn into (even shorter than before) Bachelor trainings due to the Bologna process. Not willing to set the goal deeper than before, we try to figure out how we can master some diametric factors in this area, thereby having started a lot of discussion among our members.

Most important events for German sign language interpreters in 2007

With the new law mentioned before, assignments at the doctors’ are now quite settled. In other settings (mainly regarding work situations), authorities have different ideas on the existing rules, and we still have different ideas than them, so that there is still a long way to go in order to get an easy and righteous provision of interpreters.
In a lot of settings, the working of teams of  two interpreters now is accepted, although this still varies from region to region.

Goals of our association for the coming year(s)

The goals for the BGSD for the coming year are to

  • go on discussing our position in dealing with working conditions and payment of sign language interpreters with relevant institutions,
  • work on establishing a mentoring base (the concept existing, but the mentors not being enough in numbers so far)
  • review our Code of Ethics (long term project),
  • review some of our internal rules to improve the standards of our members and - as a wanted side effect - possibly of all sign language interpreters in Germany on the long run
  • equalize rights of consumers and therefore interpreters throughout Germany.



For BGSD,
E. Vega Lechermann
Vicepresident.
Contact:
info@bgsd.de
www.bgsd.de