Oana and Nicoleta. 2007 SAF Recipients
REPORT | Romania 2007
by Oana Fărcaş and Nicoleta Dutica
For us, words are forms of actions, able to influence a change, but our words sometimes are so dry in comparison with the great experiences that we live. We will try to share with you a few words of actions about EFSLI 2007 and for the beginning see the next list of words that can bring a sort of definition of what EFSLI means for us after the experiences that we had in Zurich:
E=empathy, enthusiasm, efforts, education, expertise, enjoyment, experiences, empowerment
F=feedback, friends, fair play, faith, family, fervency, finality, followers, forum
S=signs, science, standards, safety, search, sensitivity, signals, significance, smartness, semiotics, specialists
L=long life learning, leader, legacy, lessons, long-term, linguistic
I=initiatives, impact, ideas, illumination, interactions, international, intentional, interesting
By attending the EFSLI event in Zurich, we gained new experiences about interpreter’s profession and for me, Oana, this was the second time of enjoying EFSLI and I felt adopted in the large interpreter’s family. We appreciated so much that we had the possibility to be informed on the Sign language interpreters' situation in different parts of Europe. These aspects were important because it was motivating for us to come back home encouraging people to think and do something real toward a wise strategy to develop the interpreting services. It was also nice to hear that the colleagues from Europe work in many different situations but at the core we are the same. Some of the countries invested a lot of work in writing and promoting the quality standards but the practice shows the best if we are good practitioners according to ethics and qualitative standards. We realized that these exchanges are so helpful because one can cross the border from an individualized view to a more complex perspective. We also had chances to present the situation of our country, so the colleagues from Europe could get to know about our context and the challenges we meet. The video clip that we presented with the Romanian Responsible of the Department for Sign Language showed the Romanian situation and it was a call to share experiences for the best development of the Sing Language Interpreters as a respected profession.
We would like to mention that without the EFSLI SAF our participation at the conference would not have been possible and I would like to thank all interpreters who supported us with this fund. Likewise, we are very thankful that EFSLI SAF supported us again for the AGM and Conference and we consider that this fact made a great difference for us. As Bob Dole said “When it's all over, it's not who you were. . . it's whether you made a difference.” we continue to hope that our involvement in the interpreters world will make a difference bringing quality to our work and being a profesional response to the needs of the Deaf community.
Considering the importance of working together, in a close relationship with the Deaf community, I appreciate so much all the presenters because they spoke from their professional experience but they also linked the information to the daily reality. We enjoyed also the moments when we had the chance to have group discussions in the workshops because we understood better different aspects of the quality standards, the complexity of this subject and the importance of it in our daily practice.
Thinking of the organizational sides, we are thanking and congratulating The Swiss German Association of Sign Language Interpreters (bgd) because they invested efforts in making the AGM and Conference “Setting Quality Standards” a real success. They were warm hosts and they proved to be a very nice team in all the different aspects, from organizational parts to the funny moments. With the volunteers’ involvement and the Swiss watch they made this event an unforgettable one.
Returning home we had the chance to share the experiences with many people from the National Association for the Deaf in Romania and with the students from the Babes-Bolyai University, Faculty of Letters, and Department of Applied Modern Languages as well with the students from the Faculty of Psychology and Science of Education. We’ve shared with them concepts such as: Sign Language Interpreters as professionals, setting standards, quality and some others and they showed interest in seeing future networks so, according to areas of research, practice or development to be able to take part in networking actions. Also, it was important to share our experiences with others from the Romanian authorities and we hope to establish Romanian Association of the Sign Language Interpreters (RASLI) in the near future.
For the end, as Mother Teresa said: “Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless”, we can say from our hearts:
THANK YOU, DANKE , MERCI , GRAZIE, GRACIAS, for ALL!
If you wish to contact us our emails are:
oana_farcas@yahoo.com
nicoleta_dutica@yahoo.com