Deaf Interpreters and IT

Yesterday evening I went to a talk about software development. The interesting thing is that there was a deaf man in the audience, and he brought along two deaf interpreters - yes, two, they switched every 15 minutes, it seems a hard job. The deaf interpreter sat on the stage, all to the left in front of the deaf man, so he can see the deaf interpreter and the powerpoint presentation on the screen in the same viewing angle.

I wondered how the deaf interpreter managed to translate all these abbreviations typical for IT, but abbreviations are quite common, so I guess sign language has provisions for that. But what was more difficult for them, was the weird technical terms. I often saw them look at the screen behind them if they heard a 'weird' word. Granted, in a talk about software development you don't expect to suddenly hear the word 'fitnesse' (that's a program to allow non-programmers easily write tests). But when she heard the word 'wikis', she had to interrupt the speaker and ask him what he just said :-).