Marjukka Nisula

 

Marjukka Nisula is a Senior Lecturer at Humak. She has been working as a Sign Language Interpreter since 1984 and since the early 1990s, she has been involved in interpreter education. Marjukka holds an MA degree in Education.  Nisula is studing interpreting to customers with  speech problems.

 

 

A Few words of the future

 

In the future a job description of the sign language interpreter will include customers with speech problems. Interpreters will use different communication methods in addition to sign language. There will be a variety of children and adults who will benefit of the services of (sign language) interpreters.

 

Amount of Deaf customers who use sign language as a mother tongue will reduce in the future due to surgeries of cochlear implants. Although there is a special Law for Finnish Sign Language which will obligate authorities to provide services in sign language there will be fewer sign language users. The Deaf will need interpreter’s services in the future as well. In addition there will be variety of authorities services that require the skills of sign language interpreters.

 

We, sign language interpreters, are professionals in the field of community interpreting as well as in the field of educational settings. The interpreting training has reached academic level, BA degree. Also there is international MA program available for SLI, EUMASLI. We have the knowledge and the experience of interpreting settings.

 

We share a special skill of conversation, we have the understanding of communication. We understand the meaning of communication for children and for adults. Even though Deaf are seen as a linguistic minority we have gained lots of experiences how disabled people are taken into the society. We are the expertise’s who have faced the encounters between majority and minority.

 

This is a valuable base for sign language interpreters to expand on our knowledge of interpreting. We will include the people who have problems with speech as our customers. In the future we will share what we have gained in the past as sign language interpreters!