Hanna Mignano

Interpreting Practicum Fall 2021

Professional Development

10/30/2021

1 hr.

CATIE Center. ASL Monologues

The CATIE Center uploaded this older resource of ASL monologues as a great source of study.

It was meant for receptivity practice (with voiced interpretation), and features five different signers

sharing short explanatory stories. The first was a instructional process on cooking fish. I liked that the

voicing interpreter used the word “intuition” to describe the signer's use of “FEELING” while

describing how much seasoning to add. The signer also used a nice classifier “F” handshape to convey

the tiny fishbones. The second monologue was an extremely fast signer; and I found the voiced

interpretation to be thorough, maybe even over-explanatory. I liked that he voiced the phrase “Off in a

flash” for the signed word “MINGLING”, that was different but it worked. Despite the pace of this

monologue , I was surprised at how well I managed to keep up with the interpretation. The third

monologue was a left-handed signer. A noteworthy observation was the signer's emphasis on the

directional verb “CHANGE” which was voiced as “dramatic change”. I also noticed the use of a 4

handshape classifier for the described crowded meeting. The fourth monologue; nice contrastive

structure for fingerspelling IOC and CSS; fingerspelled one on each hand which was impressive. This

reminded me that I must practice fingerspelling on my nondominant hand as well. This signer was

extremely fast, but I was also able to catch a nice concept while he was describing the order of the race.

To convey that the last in the race (in terms of time) becomes the first to start the next round, he simply

flipped his 5 handshape to show the reverse order which I thought was neat. Lastly, the fifth monologue

was a slower signer and much clearer. She right away flagged two unique signs for “Baltimore” and

“senior citizens” before proceeding with the story. I also liked her use of geographical placement when
referring between Baltimore and San Francisco.