newsli music and silence

6 Newsli issue 90 October 2014

in love with sign language in just the same way I had fallen in love with my flute. I went to classes and applied myself to learning sign language with the enthusiasm and discipline that I had once had for music. I found myself using techniques that I had used in my musical training. I kept a ‘practise’ notebook. I set aside a particular time slot to concentrate on one specific area of skill (just as I had focused on one particular flute exercise or challenging bar of music before).

I went on to give up my retail job and go to the University of Wolverhampton to do a BSL/English Interpreting degree. It was then that I became aware that many of my fellow students were rather musical too. Over the last 10 years I have met countless student interpreters, trainee interpreters and qualified interpreters who are active musicians, have a musical past or have a keen interest in music.

I now work part-time as a lecturer at the

I recently undertook a study to explore how many British sign language interpreters play musical instruments and/or sing. Here, I will discuss the results of that study and explain the reason for my interest in this area.

I didn’t grow up dreaming of becoming a sign language interpreter. I didn’t even learn to sign until I was in my mid-twenties. Rather, I spent my childhood dreaming of being a flute player and of travelling the world in a fine symphony orchestra.

At 13 I gained a music scholarship to a residential school and spent the next three years in a music room, practising the flute or piano for hours at a time, singing in the choir stall, or analysing scores and reading up on the history of music.

I went on to do music at A-level and applied to the various music schools. However, all my hours of practise had taken their toll on my tendons and it soon became clear that I was not going to be able to continue playing and practising for the amount of time required to attain and maintain the required level. I was heartbroken and packed my flute away for the next 18 years.

After 10 years in retail management I came across British Sign Language, courtesy of some Deaf customers in one of my shops. I fell

Music and silenceAre you musical? Odds are, you are, and it might even heighten your interpreting skills. Thaïsa Whistance explores the links between sign language interpreters and musical ability

‘It is possible that having had musical training aids… interpreters and increases their potential interpreting ability’

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There are many areas of similarity to be found when comparing the tasks carried out by musicians and sign language interpreters. I have briefly explored some of them below and hope to go on to look at some of these areas in more depth in the future.

Text analysisBoth musicians and interpreters start their work with a text originated by someone else. In the case of a musician, they are looking at a manuscript that has been composed and then perhaps edited further before being published for interpretation and performance by the instrumentalist, singer or conductor.

The composer’s original aim and intended impact on the audience may be made explicit by notes that accompany the manuscript itself

University of Wolverhampton. I am also a practising BSL/English interpreter and (having unearthed my flute seven years ago) a keen musician. As an interpreter trainer, I am always looking for new ways to help my students unlock their interpreting potential and I have often found myself falling back on the discipline and techniques instilled in me during my musical training.

I am, of course, aware of the wealth of research which proposes a link between music and language. ‘A growing body of evidence suggests that language and music are more closely related than previously believed,’ writes Patel (2003), but I also felt there could be a correlation between musical training and interpreting ability. I undertook this study to find out whether that is the case.

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and by historical documents that enlighten the musician. The editor of the published manuscript may well have added symbols to the notation which detail tempo and dynamics, but the final rendition is borne of the skill of the musician in both interpreting this information and in playing their instrument.

An interpreter may have the benefit of the speaker being present and may be able to clarify their intentions in order to inform their interpretation, but that is not always the case. We may be faced with a piece of video footage for translation into English or we may be engaged in sight translation of a document whose author is unknown or is not immediately accessible. We too are then aided by any extra contextual information available.

As we know, two interpreters will interpret the same original text differently. This is also the case for musicians. Instrumentalists will render distinct performances of the same piece of sheet music.

Physiological factorsThere are parallels to be found in the decision-making and processing skills involved in both disciplines, as well as the intense levels of work required to attain the practical skill level required. Further study is now necessary to review existing research to explore which parts of the brain are involved in the various activities undertaken by musicians and interpreters and to determine whether there are similarities.

Sign language interpreters and instrumentalists alike must demonstrate manual dexterity within a defined range of movement parameters. There may also be something to explore in terms of the use of peripheral vision in both reading music and receiving a signed message.

PreparationInterpretations benefit from preparation on the part of the interpreter. Although we may well cope with assignments that are contextually unfamiliar or contain terminology that is new to us, we would prefer to prepare for these challenges beforehand.

There may, however, be jobs which do not require any preparation because the interpreter is experienced within the domain or because the assignment is not linguistically complex. This is something else that we have in common with musicians. A skilled and experienced musician will be able to sight read many of the pieces of music they come across (whether or not they have any chance to prepare). There are other pieces of music which present particular challenges that the instrumentalist will need to practise before they are able to render them confidently. It is almost always the case that a period of familiarisation with the manuscript before a performance will allow for an enhanced level of dynamic variation and a more complete performance in terms of getting across the nuances of the piece, even with something that is not technically challenging.

Preparation or prior knowledge can also enhance the ability to anticipate or predict what may be coming next. A pianist who has practised and learned a D major scale will use that knowledge to aid them in anticipating potential phrase endings for a piece in that musical key. As interpreters we are always anticipating what the end of a sentence or

‘Both musicians and interpreters start their work with a text originated by someone else’

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phrase may be, based on our prior knowledge of our first and second languages and the context of the assignment.

Specialist settingsInterpreters may favour particular domains of interpreting and choose to specialise in these disciplines. In the same way, many musicians prefer specific genres or time periods of music and specialise in these. There are parallels to be drawn between the need for an interpreter to build an understanding of domain-specific terminology, and for a musician to know genre-specific musical rules and parameters.

For example, in the domain of mental health interpreting an interpreter will need to have knowledge of lexical items relating to mental health conditions and treatments. They will need to have experience of and a developed understanding of the way their presence may influence the dynamics of a therapy session. They will need to understand the means by which psychological assessments may be undertaken. Similarly, a musician specialising in the Baroque period will need specialist knowledge of the particular style of playing required. There are specific types of ornamentation which they must be confident about delivering. They may also be playing instruments which are not modern and require different techniques.

Another consideration for interpreters is the use of domain/context-appropriate register. Being able to adjust your language use to a courtroom on a Monday morning and a hen party on a Friday night can be likened to a musician playing in a jazz club one evening and a symphony orchestra the next.

Co-workingInterpreters and musicians regularly work with fellow professionals and have to develop

co-working strategies. Orchestras and ensembles have to communicate with each other via body movement, a glance of the eye and the rhythmic movement of their instruments in order to stay in time and in tune with one another. Interpreters must seamlessly turn take and ‘feed’ each other during an interpretation and rely on some of the same techniques for communicating with each other.

Having considered these various elements of similarity very briefly, I am even more fascinated by the idea that there may be something to gain by exploring the links between our two disciplines.

Research resultsIn order to test my theory that interpreters seemed to show a higher level of musical engagement that the general public, I sent out an online survey to interpreters listed on the NRCPD register.

A total of 249 interpreters responded to the survey. The respondents were varied in terms of their current registration status, with some of them holding more than one registration:53: Students32: TSLI192: RSLI9: Eligible to register but not currently registered

Over half (56.85%) can read musical notation (20.97% to a high level and 35.89% to a basic level). This is very high considering that ‘only a small fraction of the population are musically literate’ (Stewart et al, 2003).

This high level of musical literacy may be significant as there is also evidence to suggest that ‘experienced musicians, in reading, perceive structurally defined groups of notes as “chunks” of information instead of processing them one note at a time, and that

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they do so cognitively’ (Grier, J 2012). This action of ‘chunking’ is also something that we interpreters need to be good at.

According to the Music Industry Market Review (2010), 27.2% of adults claim to be able to play a musical instrument. In comparison, 33% of respondents currently play musical instruments and 28.51% of us are singers (some of those included here both sing and play multiple instruments).

Only 20.97% of respondents could not play or had not ever played a musical instrument or sung, so this means that an astonishing 79.03% have had some kind of musical training during their lifetime.

This may also be important because it has been found that the effects of musical training on the brain remain, whether or not you continue to play later in life. Skoe and Kraus (2012) suggest that ‘music practice during childhood is associated with more robust neural responses to sound in adulthood.’

There are also studies which demonstrate that learning to play an instrument or sing can have other consequences which may contribute to enhanced interpreting ability. ‘Long-term music training in non-professional musicians is associated with improvements in working memory, in both the auditory and visual domains and on both behavioral and ERP measures, and perhaps with improvements in attention’ (Stewart et al, 2003). Nutley et al also conclude that ‘Time spent on music practice predicted both visuo-spatial working memory and verbal working-memory development.’ (2014).

Various research studies have posited the theory that increased working memory capacity leads to increased interpreting ability, or that spoken language interpreters have a working memory capacity advantage (although others have not found the same

results). There is more research needed in this area. For work related to the working memory capacity of sign language interpreters see Wang and Napier (2012) and Wang (2013).

Wang and Napier (2012), in their study into

INSTRUMENTS PLAYED BY RESEARCH RESPOND ENTSInstrument Play

strictly for fun

Grade 1

Grade 2

Grade 3

Grade 4

Grade 5

Grade 6

Grade 7

Grade 8

Total

Piano 56 5 3 6 2 3 3 0 3 81Violin 10 1 1 1 13Singing 49 2 5 1 57Flute 7 1 1 2 5 1 1 18Clarinet 6 1 1 4 2 1 15Alto Sax 3 3Cello 1 2 2 1 6Guitar 53 1 1 1 56Trumpet 3 1 1 5Oboe 1 1 2Trombone 2 2Viola 1 1Descant Recorder

32 32

Harp 1 1Percussion 7 7Horn 1 1Bassoon 1 1 2Double Bass

1 2 1 4

Euphonium 1 1Tenor Sax 4 4Treble Recorder

10 1 11

Organ 3 3Tuba 1 1 2

Ukelele 13 13

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signed working memory capacity, found that ‘the hearing signers (ie the professional interpreters) have a remarkably larger Auslan WMC (working memory capacity) than the Deaf signers’.

George and Coch (2011) conclude that changes to the brain related to working memory ‘are training-related and not intrinsic to those individuals’ and so it is possible that having had musical training aids those interpreters and increases their potential interpreting ability.

There may well be other benefits which come from having had musical training. Schellenberg and Weiss (2013) explore musical aptitude and its relation to cognitive abilities, referring to a large number of studies which cover various strands of that main theme. They found that ‘the ability to map more complex pitch patterns in speech onto the emotions they signal is enhanced among musically trained adults and children in some instances but not in others’ (2013). They conclude that, ‘in short, musically trained participants are particularly good listeners’.

This enhanced ability could result in an interpretation from English to BSL that is more highly reflective of the speaker, because of the increased sensitivity to emotional nuance in the original utterance. The potential increase in the skill of effective listening is obviously highly relevant to interpreters who need to be able to focus their auditory attention on the main speaker and that person’s register, explicit and implicit informational content, style of delivery,

INSTRUMENTS PLAYED BY RESEARCH RESPOND ENTSInstrument Play

strictly for fun

Grade 1

Grade 2

Grade 3

Grade 4

Grade 5

Grade 6

Grade 7

Grade 8

Total

Piano 56 5 3 6 2 3 3 0 3 81Violin 10 1 1 1 13Singing 49 2 5 1 57Flute 7 1 1 2 5 1 1 18Clarinet 6 1 1 4 2 1 15Alto Sax 3 3Cello 1 2 2 1 6Guitar 53 1 1 1 56Trumpet 3 1 1 5Oboe 1 1 2Trombone 2 2Viola 1 1Descant Recorder

32 32

Harp 1 1Percussion 7 7Horn 1 1Bassoon 1 1 2Double Bass

1 2 1 4

Euphonium 1 1Tenor Sax 4 4Treble Recorder

10 1 11

Organ 3 3Tuba 1 1 2

Ukelele 13 13

‘There are parallels in the decision-making and processing skills involved in both disciplines, as well as the intense levels of work required to attain the practical skill level required’

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intended impact and so on. All of these areas warrant further investigation.

Having established via the questionnaire that many of the respondents had indeed had some kind of musical training, it was important to explore the extent of that training in the context of quantifiable musical ability.

Graded music examinationsThere are two main awarding bodies for music performance qualifications: The Associated Board of the Royal School of Music (ABRSM) and Trinity College London (TCL).

ABRSM examinations are currently the most popular, with 288,400 music qualification achievements shown for 2011-12. Trinity College London is shown with 83,317 arts and media-related awards (including music or dance, etc) for the same period (OFQUAL, 2013). This indicates that the number of graded music examinations held by Trinity College is around a quarter of the number held by ABRSM in the same period (83,317 is precisely 28.88% of 288,300, although the former figure represents all arts and media exams at TCL, not just music).

ABRSM statistics for 2012 show that in the UK, 9,084 people achieved a Grade 8 music performance qualification. Exact figures for Trinity College Grade 8 examinations are not available as a separate entity, but if we estimate them at a maximum of 28.88% of the total taken at Grade 8 with ABRSM (in line with what we know about the total yearly figure) then this gives an estimated figure of 2,830 people. This leaves us with, potentially, 11,914 people achieving a music performance examination at Grade 8 level in 2012.

The population of the UK was estimated to be 63.7 million in mid-2012 (Office for National Statistics). This means that in 2012 an estimated 0.018% of the population achieved

a grade 8 music performance qualification. Allowing for the same amount of the

general population achieving this level every year over a span of say, 60 years (covering the age span of the respondents), this would still only equate to 1.08% of the general population having a Grade 8 qualification. Four per cent of our respondents can claim this same distinction. It therefore seems reasonable to suggest that 4% is well over the level one might expect. When taking Grade 5 figures as an example, 8.4% of our respondents hold a Grade 5 certificate but when applying the same numerical extrapolation to the 2012 figures for the general population, only 3.5% might be expected to do so.

Instruments played by respondentsThe table on the preceding pages shows details of some of the instruments played by respondents, along with the level of qualification (if any) attained. The graded exams figures include those who took ABRSM/ Trinity and Guildhall examinations and those who could not remember which exam board they took.

We also have in our midst a diploma-level pianist and violinist, and interpreters who play some rather unusual instruments: the didgeridoo, the steel pans, the theremin, the harmonica and the mandolin to name but

‘Interpreters must seamlessly ‘‘turn take’’ and feed each other during an interpretation and rely on some of the same communication techniques for communicating with each other (as musicians)’

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a few. We could put together an entertaining concert programme between us!

ConclusionWe interpreters are indeed a musical lot. A higher proportion of the respondents play musical instruments than is the case for the general public and it seems that there are proportionately more of us that have achieved graded levels in musical performance examinations than could be anticipated (as far as can be determined with the data available). I hope that further investigation of the parallels

between the tasks and processes undertaken by sign language interpreters and musicians may lead to the conclusion that musical pedagogy has something to offer the world of sign language interpreting, given that it has a much longer history to draw upon. I now plan to continue to look in finer detail at why this may be the case and to etsablish what, if any, benefit may result from this correlation.

I would like to thank all of those BSL/English interpreters who took the time to fill in the survey, and I look forward to continuing my exploration of this area.

REFERENCES ABRSM (2012) Graded Music Exams by result available online at http://us.abrsm.org/en/press/exam-statistics/graded-music-exams-by-result-practical/ George, E.M and Coch, D (2011) ‘Music training and working memory: An ERP study’ in Neuropsychologia 49 (2011) pp1083-1094. Grier, J (2012) ‘Musical literacy: a historical perspective’ in Anais do ii simpom 2012 - simpósio brasileiro de pós-graduandos em música pp89-101. Music Industry Marketing Review (2010) available online at http://www.keynote.co.uk/market-intelli-gence/view/product/2324/music-industry/chapter/11/amateur-music Office for National Statistics available online at http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/pop-estimate/popula-tion-estimates-for-uk--england-and-wales--scotland-and-northern-ireland/mid-2011-and-mid-2012/index.html OFQUAL (2013) Annual Qualifications Market Report. Available online at ofqual.gov.uk Bergman Nutley, S, Darki, F, and Klingberg, T (2014) ‘Music practice is associated with development of working memory during childhood and adolescence’ in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 7 (926) pp1-9. Patel, D.A, (2003) ‘Language, Music, Syntax and the Brain’ in Nature Neuroscience 6 (7) pp674-681. Schellenberg, G.E and Weiss, M.W, (2013) ‘Music and cognitive abilities’ in Psychology of Music, 3rd Edn, ed Deutsch, D (Amsterdam: Elsevier Inc) pp499-550. Stewart, L and Henson, R, Kampe, K, Walsh, V, Turner, R & Frith, U (2003) ‘Brain changes after learning to read and play music’ in Neuroimage 20 (1) pp71-83. Skoe, E and Kraus, N (2012) ‘A Little Goes a Long Way: How the Adult Brain Is Shaped by Musical Training in Childhood’ in The Journal of Neuroscience, 32(34) pp11507-11510. Wang, J and Napier, J (2012) ‘Signed Language Working Memory Capacity of Signed Language Interpreters and Deaf Signers’ in Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 18(2). April 2013 pp271-286. Wang, J (2013) ‘Bilingual working memory capacity of professional Auslan / English interpreters’ in Interpreting 15(2). 2013. iii, pp139-167.

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