He made waves with his arms, touched his forehead and reached out with an embracing motion. And as the official interpreter for the deaf watching the Nelson Mandela memorial event Tuesday, he stood right behind the world’s most powerful leaders, including President Obama.
And he was a fake, advocates for the deaf say.
Web sites and radio shows here were flooded with condemnations of the African National Congress-led government and the organizers of the memorial at FNB Stadium in Soweto for failing to figure out whether the man was simply waving his arms around.
“Please get RID of this CLOWN interpreter, please!” Bruno Peter Druchen, head of the Deaf Federation of South Africa, tweeted during the memorial.
“ANC linked interpreter on stage is causing embarrassment amongst deaf ANC supporters. Please get him off,” added Wilma Newhoudt, a deaf member of the South African Parliament and vice president of the World Federation of the Deaf.
But the man remained on stage, and on Wednesday, his performance became the focus of a new storm of criticism. People who phoned an afternoon radio call-in show said the situation showed inept hiring, insensitivity to the deaf and a serious security lapse on the part of event organizers. And, they said, it marred the solemn event by distracting attention from Mandela and the world leaders who came to pay tribute to him.
On Thursday, the Johannesburg Star reported that the man, Thamsanqa Jantjie, said in an interview that he was suffering from schizophrenia and that he had lost concentration and started hearing voices during the event. He said that made it hard to hear the speeches and interpret but that he couldn’t just leave so he stayed on. “There was nothing I could do. I was alone in a very dangerous situation. I tried to control myself and not show the world what was going on. I am very sorry, it’s the situation I found myself in,” Jantjie, 34, told the Star.
He said he works for a company called SA Interpreters and that they told him on Monday that he would interpret at the memorial service. “Life is unfair. This illness is unfair. Anyone who doesn’t understand this illness will think that I’m just making this up,” Jantjie told the Star.
In other interviews, however, Jantjie defended his performance at the Mandela memorial. Asked if he was happy with it, he told Johannesburg’s Talk Radio 702: “Absolutely, absolutely. I think that I’ve been a champion of sign language.”
Hendrietta Bogopane-Zulu, deputy minister of women, children and people with disabilities, told a news conference that Jantjie, 34, “was not a professional.” She said he was paid far less than a professional sign language interpreter would have earned and that the company that allegedly employed him “vanished into thin air.”
Bogopane-Zulu added: “It’s a clear indication that over the years they have managed to get away with this. They have been providing substandard sign language interpreting services to many of their clients.”
She apologized to deaf people who were offended and were denied translations of the memorial speakers’ remarks.
According to the Associated Press, Collins Chabane, one of South Africa’s two presidency ministers, said the government was investigating and “will report publicly on any information it may establish.”
The agency also reported that an address and phone number that Jantjie provided for his company in an interview turned out to be false.
White House officials directed questions about the interpreter to the South African government but gave no indication that there were concerns about Obama’s security arising from the discovery.
“I think the point is that he apparently was not translating him into anything but was enjoying the opportunity to be on the stage,” Josh Earnest, the principal deputy White House press secretary, said Wednesday at the daily briefing. “It would be a shame if a distraction about an individual who’s on stage in any way detracted from the importance of that event and the importance of President Mandela’s legacy.”
It was the latest controversy in a week devoted to remembering Mandela. President Jacob Zuma was booed by the crowd at the stadium, rain kept “overflow” stadiums largely empty, and lines of people waiting to see Mandela’s body in state Wednesday snaked their way through a hot, jam-packed parking lot while a single security checkpoint slowed progress.
Many viewers of Tuesday’s event noticed that the man was using the same gestures over and over again. Druchen tweeted that the man “is not using sign language at all.”
Sign language interpreter Francois Deysel tweeted, “please can someone ask the interpreter to step down from stage, it is embarrassing and making a mockery of our profession.”
Video clips show that this wasn’t the man’s first performance. He was the interpreter at the ANC’s Mangaung policy conference in the Free State last year. He interpreted the controversial song “Shoot the Boer” led by Zuma during his election campaign. When Zuma said people would run, the man pumped his arms up and down. Often, the man’s gestures were the same as Zuma’s. (Boer is a term for white Afrikaners.)
Druchen observed that the phony interpreter “knows that the deaf cannot vocally boo him off. Shame on him!”
Interpreters are not unusual in multilingual South Africa, where large groups of people speak English, Afrikaans, Zulu, Xhosa or other African languages. Druchen recommended that signing be made the country’s 12th official language.
Sign language interpreters and others in the United States and around the world also expressed outrage at the incident.
“We, along with many other organizations, are disappointed with the process that selected the interpreter that was shown on camera for the Mandela service, and feel that a great disservice was done to both the South African signing community, and the international signing community,” the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf, based in Alexandria, Va., said in a statement.
The World Association of Sign Language Interpreters, based in Australia, said: “This situation stresses the need for continued public education about the formal training required to be a qualified sign language interpreter and the need for interpreter and deaf associations to collaborate on pressing governments for standards.”
The National Association of the Deaf, based in Silver Spring, Md., said interpreters must be vetted.
“Each country has its own national sign language and sometimes even regional sign languages,” the association said. “In the United States, we use American Sign Language (ASL) while in South Africa, most people use South African Sign Language (SASL), which is distinct and uses different signs than ASL. We, at the NAD, cannot assess the qualifications or fluency or lack thereof of the interpreter in this video, but are informed by the South African deaf and hard of hearing community that this interpreter is not legitimately interpreting in SASL.”
One expert in the United States who reviewed a video of the event said problems with the purported interpretation were easy to see.
“When I watch him, he appears to be doing a lot of repetitive hand motion. It doesn’t look like any natural sign language to me,” said Melanie Metzger, head of the department of interpretation at Gallaudet University, a prominent school for the deaf and hard of hearing in Washington, D.C. “What he’s doing is not matching the speaker. He’s not interpreting the speaker.”
Metzger said another tipoff was that the man onstage used minimal facial expressions. Authentic interpreters around the world, she said, make extensive use of their eyebrows, cheeks and other parts of the face to communicate in sign language.
在南非前总统曼德拉的追悼大会上，一名男子引起各方注意。作为官方手语翻译，他站在上台致辞的各国元首和领导人身后，将其对曼德拉的悼念和追思“传递”给全球聋哑人士。
据美国《华盛顿邮报》12月12日报道，这名手语翻译被聋哑人权益保护组织指认为“彻头彻尾的骗子”，成为众矢之的。12日，该男子接受采访辩称自己在台上失态是因为突发“精神分裂”。
***假翻译当场露馅
在10日举行的曼德拉追悼大会上，许多观众注意到台上的手语翻译虽然手臂翻飞、煞有其事，但细看之下就会发现他只是在一遍又一遍重复相同的动作，根本没有使用手语。
“请让这个小丑翻译下台吧，求求你们了！”追悼大会举行时，南非聋人联合会主席布鲁诺•彼得•德鲁琛发布微博，要求组织方把这个装模作样的假翻译撤下。
德鲁琛的呼吁得到了其他专业人士的声援。南非议 会聋人议员、世界聋人联合会副主席威尔玛•纽豪特说称：“台上的手语翻译，只会给‘南非非洲人国民大会’（ANC，南非执政党）的聋人支持者带来尴尬，请 让他下台！”资深手语翻译弗朗索瓦•德赛尔在微博上说，这个假翻译让手语“沦为笑柄”。
然而，组织方并未作出调整，这名男子一直留在台上直至追悼大会结束。
***南非政府被狠批
“曼德拉追悼大会的口语翻译是个冒牌货”的消息传出后，南非各大网站和电台节目瞬间就被谴责声淹没，人们指责南非政府和追悼大会组织方严重失职。
11日下午，当地一档电台热线节目接到听众投诉，称假翻译事件暴露出组织方存在招聘不力、不关心聋人群体、安全意识严重匮乏等问题，更为严重的是，它分散了公众对曼德拉逝世和各国首脑向其致敬这一庄严事件的注意力。
目前，南非政府宣称正在调查此事，并承诺“及时向民众通报调查进展”。但还无法知晓这名男子的身份，以及他是如何应聘成功的。
***白宫斥其为“耻辱”
11日，美国白宫公开回应曼德拉追悼大会上发生的假翻译事件，但拒绝说明美方是否因由此事担心总统奥巴马的人身安全。
“我想重点是他显然没有翻译什么东西，而是他在享受登台的机会。”白宫副新闻秘书乔什•欧内斯特说，追悼大会意在缅怀曼德拉的传奇一生，此时出现这类无关紧要的插曲是一种“耻辱”。
《华盛顿邮报》指出，视频显示曼德拉追悼大会并不是这名冒牌手语翻译首次登台。去年，南非政党“南非非洲人国民大会”在该国中部自由邦省举行政策宣讲会时，他为南非总统祖马充当手语翻译。宣讲会全程，他的手势与祖马大同小异。
“他知道聋哑人不能发声把他嘘下台来，简直是太可耻了！”德鲁琛还补充道，在南非这个多语种并存的国家，手语翻译并不少见，“手语应成为南非的第十二官方语言”。
***惹怒外国“同行”
除了聋哑人权益保护组织和出席追悼大会的贵宾外，南非“冒牌”手语翻译的蹩脚表现还惹怒了他的外国“同行”。
“据我观察，他只是在做大量的重复手部动作，根本不是手语。他的手势不符合讲话内容。”华盛顿高立德大学手语翻译系主任梅勒妮•梅茨格说，除在台上“胡言乱语”外，这名假翻译还面无表情，“真正的手语翻译，会充分利用眉毛、脸颊等面部部位，从而进行更好的手语交流”。
美国非盈利组织“手语翻译注册协会”发表声明称：“我们对南非曼德拉追悼大会的手语翻译以及组织方挑选翻译的过程深感失望，这严重损害了南非手语翻译群体和国际手语翻译群体的形象和利益。”
总部设在澳大利亚的世界手语翻译协会认为，曼德拉追悼大会假翻译事件凸显出，“开展公共教育、告诉民众成为合格的手语翻译需要接受正规培训，以及有关各方敦促政府出台行业标准的必要性和迫切性”。
***辩称失态因“精神分裂”
当地时间12日，这位名为萨玛桑卡•姜杰（Thamasanqa Jantjie）的“冒牌”手语翻译自动现身，接受南非约翰内斯堡《星报》的采访。他解释称自己在台上失态是因为突发“精神分裂”，导致无法自控。
“我试着想要控制自己，不让观众发现异常。但是很抱歉，我什么都做不了，我当时的情况十分危险。”姜杰声称，他在台上进行手语翻译时，突然无法集中注意力、脑中出现幻听和幻觉，这才导致他失态，比划出毫无意义的“手语”。他还说自己现在正在服用治疗“精神分裂”的药物。
当被问及“既然病发为何不离场休息”时，姜杰回答道：“考虑到（曼德拉追悼大会）的历史重要性，他认为即使自己状态很差也不能离场。“生活是不公平的，这种疾病同样不公平”，他还补充道，“不了解这种病症的人肯定认为我在撒谎。”
另据法新社报道，早在曼德拉追悼大会之前，姜杰的手语翻译能力就遭到南非业内人士的质疑。南非手语翻译协会主席乔翰•布洛乌称，此前协会收到过几起投诉称姜杰的工作表现不佳，协会对姜杰“持保留意见”。