An invitation to dance: deaf consumers' perceptions of signed language interpreters and interpreting

Research on signed language interpreting is an emerging subdiscipline of interpreting and translation studies (Pöchhacker, 2004), and the number of research-based publications has been gradually increasing (see Harrington & Turner, 2001; Janzen, 2005; Marschark, Peterson, & Winston, 2005; Metzger, Collins, Dively, & Shaw, 2003; Metzger & Fleetwood, 2005). Typically, these studies have focused on interpreters' production of an interpreted message in one direction, on equivalence and accuracy (Cokely, 1992; Napier, 2002; Russell, 2002), or on the interactive nature of interpreting (Metzger, 1999; Roy, 2000), but very few researchers have examined interpreting from the perspective of the deaf consumer and actually involved deaf people in the analysis of interpreting and interpreters.