Abstract
Deaf people’s lives are predicated to some extent on working with sign language interpreters. The self is
translated on a regular basis and is a long-term state of being. Identity becomes known and performed through the translated self
in many interactions, especially at work. (Hearing) others’ experience of deaf people, largely formed indirectly through the use
of sign language interpreters, is rarely understood as intercultural or from a sociocultural linguistic perspective. This study
positions itself at the cross-roads of translation studies, sociolinguistics and deaf studies, to specifically discuss findings
from a scoping study that sought, for the first time, to explore whether the experience of being ‘known’ through translation is a
pertinent issue for deaf signers. Through interviews with three deaf signers, we examine how they draw upon their linguistic
repertoires and adopt bimodal translanguaging strategies in their work to assert or maintain their professional identity,
including bypassing their representation through interpreters. This group we refer to as ‘Deaf Contextual Speakers’ (DCS). The DCS
revealed the tensions they experienced as deaf signers in reinforcing, contravening or perpetuating language ideologies, with
respect to assumptions that hearing people make about them as deaf people, their language use in differing contexts; the status of
sign language; as well as the perceptions of other deaf signers about their translanguaging choices. This preliminary discussion
of DCS’ engagement with translation, translanguaging and professional identity(ies) will contribute to theoretical discussions of
translanguaging through the examination of how this group of deaf people draw upon their multilingual and multimodal repertoires,
contingent and situational influences on these choices, and extend our understanding of the relationship between language use,
power, identity, translation and representation.
Earlier and more robust sensorimotor discrimination of ASL signs in deaf signers during imitation
