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HeartTo the Heart of the Matter: The Cardiovascular System in ASL and English

with Paul Buttenhoff and Kendall Kail
Interpretations by Patty McCutcheon

Produced by Todd Tourville

An exploration of the cardiovascular system with lectures in both spoken English and ASL, this resource is an excellent opportunity for interpreters to develop their understanding of anatomy and practice their skills for both academic and clinical settings.


Educational Purposes

This project was produced with many different possibilities for use. What is suggested here is to use this as a tool to help further the development of technical interpreting skills in a typical college setting.
This lecture focuses on the Cardiovascular System. Each text is presented twice, once in a technical format (Actual times: ASL–14:12; English–15:39) and once in a warm-up format (Actual times: ASL–6:08; English–6:18). You may choose to start with the warm-up text to familiarize yourself with the idiosyncrasies of the presenters and begin basic analysis of the concepts presented before attempting the technical text. The transcripts of the English texts are provided. The notes from the Deaf presenter are provided as a guide to the ASL text. You will also find a handout “Specialized Vocabulary/Diagrams” referred to in the presentations. It is recommended that you utilize
these resources in developing a plan for the interpretation of each text.
Depending on the level of skill and your imagination, this text may be used as a tool for:

  • Message Analysis
  • Discourse Analysis
  • Visualization Practice
  • Analysis for Message Equivalence
  • Vocabulary Building
  • Language Models
  • Interpreting Model
  • Expressive Interpretation or Transliteration
  • Receptive Interpretation
  • Fingerspelling Recognition
  • And the list goes on…

It is important to note that the participants involved in this project were not allowed to endlessly rehearse their presentation. It was a goal of this project to provide stimulus materials that reflect as closely as possible actual live situations. The interpreting models provided are used only as one of many possibilities. The interpreter was allowed to view both the English text and the ASL text once before attempting the piece. This is not to imply it is the only model or the only choices that could or should be made.

Todd Tourville, Producer

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