Sign language interpreters (SLI) provide a vital service to the deaf community but also experience high levels of pain and suffer from career threatening musculoskeletal disorders. Balancing work and rest (recovery) may be a useful intervention to help address these concerns. This thesis addresses two specific questions, parsed out of a larger study seeking to determine ideal work to rest ratios for sign language interpreting. The aims of this specific body of work were to evaluate sign language interpreters (SLIs) perceptions of the mental and physical demands associated with different work to rest ratios; and, to measure kinematics during signing, comparing kinematic outcomes between novice and experienced SLIs and over time using the work to rest ratio that was perceived as the least demanding (as identified in aim 1). Nine novice and nine experienced interpreters participated in the study, each interpreting the same ten hours of a university level lecture, over the course of six visits to the laboratory. During each session interpreters worked (“hands in the air”) for 60 minutes, but used a different work to rest strategy in each session. These strategies ranged from 10-minute work, 10-minute rest, to 60 minutes of continuous work with no rest. During each session, participants were instrumented with motion capture and electromyography sensors while interpreting in a simulated working environment. In addition, SLIs were asked to provide feedback about their perceptions of the mental and physical demands associated with each session. The first study in this thesis reports on participant’s subjective feedback about the six different sessions (paper #1); where participants identified the 15-minute work to rest ratio as ideal. The second paper reports on kinematic data from this perceived ideal work to rest ratio (paper #2). Despite interpreting in a work to rest ratio that SLIs perceived as ideal, kinematic variables with known associations to injury risk (joint position, velocity, micro-breaks) readily exceeded reported thresholds. / Thesis (Master, Kinesiology & Health Studies) -- Queen's University, 2014-05-29 17:46:11.133

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Thesis (M.S.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 1983. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 74-78).

Thesis (MA--Applied Language Studies) -- AUT University, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references. Also held in print (viii, 120 leaves ; 30 cm.) in the Archive at the City Campus (T 419.93 PIV)

This thesis sets out to investigate the field of public service interpreting in southern Spain, with a particular emphasis on the position of volunteer interpreters working at two different healthcare institutions. It looks at the power relationships that develop between agents that hold different degrees of control and autonomy, especially in a context where individuals hold different forms and volume of capital in each encounter. Drawing on Bourdieu’s Theory of Practice, the study offers an in-depth examination of a group of volunteer interpreters as legitimate agents of the wider field of public service interpreting and the sub-field of healthcare interpreting, while looking at their impact on the structures and ethics of the larger field. This is the first project to employ Bourdieu’s theory in a sustained case study of a healthcare context where volunteer interpreters operate as legitimised institutional agents. One of the peculiarities of the two settings under examination is that volunteer interpreters seem to have acquired a high degree of institutionalisation, which provides them with a large volume of symbolic capital and allows them to take part in the field as legitimate members of the healthcare team, often occupying similar positions to those adopted by doctors at the top end of the field hierarchy. The study adopts an ethnographic approach based on a triangulation of data: participant observation of volunteer interpreters, audio-recorded interpreter-mediated interaction and focus-group interviews with volunteer interpreters. The primary data that informs the thesis consists of four focus groups carried out with volunteer interpreters in two different Spanish hospitals. The additional use of participant observations and audio-recordings make it possible to examine not only interpreters’ perceptions but also actual behaviour in authentic encounters, and to compare interpreters’ perception of their positioning with the actual positions they often occupy in the field.

R is a programming language and a tool used mostly in statistics and data analysis domains, with a rich package-based extension system. GNU-R, the standard interpreter of R, in version 3.5.0 introduced a new native API (ALTREP) for R extensions developers. The goal of the thesis is to implement this API for FastR, an interpreter of R based on GraalVM and Truffle, and explore options for optimization of FastR in context of this API. The motivation is to increase the number of extensions that can be installed and run on FastR. 1

This study analyzes the novels of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. from the aspect of point of view. Point of view refers to the reflective mind through which a reader perceives the story. Traditionally, the narrator delivers his narrative in either first or third person point of view, but Vonnegut frequently mixes points of view. Mixed point of view presents a particular challenge to the oral interpreter and the adapter/director of readers theatre scripts. The narrator and the narrative structure are discussed, as well as numerous innovative narrative techniques. Suggestions are made for script adaptations and production direction featuring the narrative structure and point of view.

The project of American economic imperialism in China during the first half of the twentieth century was first and foremost an imagined enterprise. This dissertation examines the role of the Student Interpreters Corps (SIC) in this endeavor. Studying language-trained intermediaries, this treatment is a first step towards studying history with an approach that is neither top-down nor bottom-up but rather middle-outward. Examining hitherto neglected personnel records and State Department correspondence, this study reveals the SIC as part of an imagined but unsuccessful program of economic imperialism. Although effective in garnering American business interest and support for Foreign Service reform and expansion, efforts to entice American merchants and companies to enter Asian markets (particularly in China) failed to yield a coherent, successful trade empire. However, the largely unstated goal of increased American power was achieved as the result of a bureaucratic imperative for specialization, professionalization, and institutional expansion set in motion during the establishment of the SIC. Examining the evolving roles and views of SIC-trained intermediaries, this dissertation finds that while the imagined trade empire failed to materialize, the SIC contributed to a developing American perception of China that envisioned increasingly greater American intervention in East Asia. In this millieu, a “Peking” order emerged by the mid-1920s that became influential in American East Asia policy towards the eve of Word War II that saw China as vital to American interests. Established as precursor of American economic empire in China, the SIC was instrumental in shifting discourse away from economic empire towards an interventionist American Orientalism. Trade expansion rhetoric waned and Orientalist language solidified as Japanese aggression became more blatant and the ascendance of Communism in China ever more certain. Highlighting the bureaucratic intermediaries as new method of studying history, this study indicates that the project of American economic imperialism was largely imagined, but one that transformed to accommodate evolving visions of expanding American power in East Asia. These conclusions offer new challenges to and opportunities for scholars of American foreign relations.

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