曼德拉追悼會驚現“假翻譯” 辯稱精神分裂導致失態

He made waves with his arms, touched his forehead and reached out with an embracing motion. And as the official interpreter for the deaf watching the Nelson Mandela memorial event Tuesday, he stood right behind the world’s most powerful leaders, including President Obama.

And he was a fake, advocates for the deaf say.

Web sites and radio shows here were flooded with condemnations of the African National Congress-led government and the organizers of the memorial at FNB Stadium in Soweto for failing to figure out whether the man was simply waving his arms around.

“Please get RID of this CLOWN interpreter, please!” Bruno Peter Druchen, head of the Deaf Federation of South Africa, tweeted during the memorial.

“ANC linked interpreter on stage is causing embarrassment amongst deaf ANC supporters. Please get him off,” added Wilma Newhoudt, a deaf member of the South African Parliament and vice president of the World Federation of the Deaf.

But the man remained on stage, and on Wednesday, his performance became the focus of a new storm of criticism. People who phoned an afternoon radio call-in show said the situation showed inept hiring, insensitivity to the deaf and a serious security lapse on the part of event organizers. And, they said, it marred the solemn event by distracting attention from Mandela and the world leaders who came to pay tribute to him.

On Thursday, the Johannesburg Star reported that the man, Thamsanqa Jantjie, said in an interview that he was suffering from schizophrenia and that he had lost concentration and started hearing voices during the event. He said that made it hard to hear the speeches and interpret but that he couldn’t just leave so he stayed on. “There was nothing I could do. I was alone in a very dangerous situation. I tried to control myself and not show the world what was going on. I am very sorry, it’s the situation I found myself in,” Jantjie, 34, told the Star.

He said he works for a company called SA Interpreters and that they told him on Monday that he would interpret at the memorial service. “Life is unfair. This illness is unfair. Anyone who doesn’t understand this illness will think that I’m just making this up,” Jantjie told the Star.

In other interviews, however, Jantjie defended his performance at the Mandela memorial. Asked if he was happy with it, he told Johannesburg’s Talk Radio 702: “Absolutely, absolutely. I think that I’ve been a champion of sign language.”

Hendrietta Bogopane-Zulu, deputy minister of women, children and people with disabilities, told a news conference that Jantjie, 34, “was not a professional.” She said he was paid far less than a professional sign language interpreter would have earned and that the company that allegedly employed him “vanished into thin air.”

Bogopane-Zulu added: “It’s a clear indication that over the years they have managed to get away with this. They have been providing substandard sign language interpreting services to many of their clients.”

She apologized to deaf people who were offended and were denied translations of the memorial speakers’ remarks.

According to the Associated Press, Collins Chabane, one of South Africa’s two presidency ministers, said the government was investigating and “will report publicly on any information it may establish.”

The agency also reported that an address and phone number that Jantjie provided for his company in an interview turned out to be false.

White House officials directed questions about the interpreter to the South African government but gave no indication that there were concerns about Obama’s security arising from the discovery.

“I think the point is that he apparently was not translating him into anything but was enjoying the opportunity to be on the stage,” Josh Earnest, the principal deputy White House press secretary, said Wednesday at the daily briefing. “It would be a shame if a distraction about an individual who’s on stage in any way detracted from the importance of that event and the importance of President Mandela’s legacy.”

It was the latest controversy in a week devoted to remembering Mandela. President Jacob Zuma was booed by the crowd at the stadium, rain kept “overflow” stadiums largely empty, and lines of people waiting to see Mandela’s body in state Wednesday snaked their way through a hot, jam-packed parking lot while a single security checkpoint slowed progress.

Many viewers of Tuesday’s event noticed that the man was using the same gestures over and over again. Druchen tweeted that the man “is not using sign language at all.”

Sign language interpreter Francois Deysel tweeted, “please can someone ask the interpreter to step down from stage, it is embarrassing and making a mockery of our profession.”

Video clips show that this wasn’t the man’s first performance. He was the interpreter at the ANC’s Mangaung policy conference in the Free State last year. He interpreted the controversial song “Shoot the Boer” led by Zuma during his election campaign. When Zuma said people would run, the man pumped his arms up and down. Often, the man’s gestures were the same as Zuma’s. (Boer is a term for white Afrikaners.)

Druchen observed that the phony interpreter “knows that the deaf cannot vocally boo him off. Shame on him!”

Interpreters are not unusual in multilingual South Africa, where large groups of people speak English, Afrikaans, Zulu, Xhosa or other African languages. Druchen recommended that signing be made the country’s 12th official language.

Sign language interpreters and others in the United States and around the world also expressed outrage at the incident.

“We, along with many other organizations, are disappointed with the process that selected the interpreter that was shown on camera for the Mandela service, and feel that a great disservice was done to both the South African signing community, and the international signing community,” the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf, based in Alexandria, Va., said in a statement.

The World Association of Sign Language Interpreters, based in Australia, said: “This situation stresses the need for continued public education about the formal training required to be a qualified sign language interpreter and the need for interpreter and deaf associations to collaborate on pressing governments for standards.”

The National Association of the Deaf, based in Silver Spring, Md., said interpreters must be vetted.

“Each country has its own national sign language and sometimes even regional sign languages,” the association said. “In the United States, we use American Sign Language (ASL) while in South Africa, most people use South African Sign Language (SASL), which is distinct and uses different signs than ASL. We, at the NAD, cannot assess the qualifications or fluency or lack thereof of the interpreter in this video, but are informed by the South African deaf and hard of hearing community that this interpreter is not legitimately interpreting in SASL.”

One expert in the United States who reviewed a video of the event said problems with the purported interpretation were easy to see.

“When I watch him, he appears to be doing a lot of repetitive hand motion. It doesn’t look like any natural sign language to me,” said Melanie Metzger, head of the department of interpretation at Gallaudet University, a prominent school for the deaf and hard of hearing in Washington, D.C. “What he’s doing is not matching the speaker. He’s not interpreting the speaker.”

Metzger said another tipoff was that the man onstage used minimal facial expressions. Authentic interpreters around the world, she said, make extensive use of their eyebrows, cheeks and other parts of the face to communicate in sign language.在南非前總統曼德拉的追悼大會上，一名男子引起各方注意。作爲官方手語翻譯，他站在上臺致辭的各國元首和領導人身後，將其對曼德拉的悼念和追思“傳遞”給全球聾啞人士。

據美國《華盛頓郵報》12月12日報道，這名手語翻譯被聾啞人權益保護組織指認爲“徹頭徹尾的騙子”，成爲衆矢之的。12日，該男子接受採訪辯稱自己在臺上失態是因爲突發“精神分裂”。

***假翻譯當場露餡

在10日舉行的曼德拉追悼大會上，許多觀衆注意到臺上的手語翻譯雖然手臂翻飛、煞有其事，但細看之下就會發現他只是在一遍又一遍重複相同的動作，根本沒有使用手語。

“請讓這個小丑翻譯下臺吧，求求你們了！”追悼大會舉行時，南非聾人聯合會主席布魯諾•彼得•德魯琛發佈微博，要求組織方把這個裝模作樣的假翻譯撤下。

德魯琛的呼籲得到了其他專業人士的聲援。南非議會聾人議員、世界聾人聯合會副主席威爾瑪•紐豪特說稱：“臺上的手語翻譯，只會給‘南非非洲人國民大會’（ANC，南非執政黨）的聾人支持者帶來尷尬，請讓他下臺！”資深手語翻譯弗朗索瓦•德賽爾在微博上說，這個假翻譯讓手語“淪爲笑柄”。

然而，組織方並未作出調整，這名男子一直留在臺上直至追悼大會結束。

***南非政府被狠批

“曼德拉追悼大會的口語翻譯是個冒牌貨”的消息傳出後，南非各大網站和電臺節目瞬間就被譴責聲淹沒，人們指責南非政府和追悼大會組織方嚴重失職。

11日下午，當地一檔電臺熱線節目接到聽衆投訴，稱假翻譯事件暴露出組織方存在招聘不力、不關心聾人羣體、安全意識嚴重匱乏等問題，更爲嚴重的是，它分散了公衆對曼德拉逝世和各國首腦向其致敬這一莊嚴事件的注意力。

目前，南非政府宣稱正在調查此事，並承諾“及時向民衆通報調查進展”。但還無法知曉這名男子的身份，以及他是如何應聘成功的。

***白宮斥其爲“恥辱”

11日，美國白宮公開回應曼德拉追悼大會上發生的假翻譯事件，但拒絕說明美方是否因由此事擔心總統奧巴馬的人身安全。

“我想重點是他顯然沒有翻譯什麼東西，而是他在享受登臺的機會。”白宮副新聞祕書喬什•歐內斯特說，追悼大會意在緬懷曼德拉的傳奇一生，此時出現這類無關緊要的插曲是一種“恥辱”。

《華盛頓郵報》指出，視頻顯示曼德拉追悼大會並不是這名冒牌手語翻譯首次登臺。去年，南非政黨“南非非洲人國民大會”在該國中部自由邦省舉行政策宣講會時，他爲南非總統祖馬充當手語翻譯。宣講會全程，他的手勢與祖馬大同小異。

“他知道聾啞人不能發聲把他噓下臺來，簡直是太可恥了！”德魯琛還補充道，在南非這個多語種並存的國家，手語翻譯並不少見，“手語應成爲南非的第十二官方語言”。

***惹怒外國“同行”

除了聾啞人權益保護組織和出席追悼大會的貴賓外，南非“冒牌”手語翻譯的蹩腳表現還惹怒了他的外國“同行”。

“據我觀察，他只是在做大量的重複手部動作，根本不是手語。他的手勢不符合講話內容。”華盛頓高立德大學手語翻譯系主任梅勒妮•梅茨格說，除在臺上“胡言亂語”外，這名假翻譯還面無表情，“真正的手語翻譯，會充分利用眉毛、臉頰等面部部位，從而進行更好的手語交流”。

美國非盈利組織“手語翻譯註冊協會”發表聲明稱：“我們對南非曼德拉追悼大會的手語翻譯以及組織方挑選翻譯的過程深感失望，這嚴重損害了南非手語翻譯羣體和國際手語翻譯羣體的形象和利益。”

總部設在澳大利亞的世界手語翻譯協會認爲，曼德拉追悼大會假翻譯事件凸顯出，“開展公共教育、告訴民衆成爲合格的手語翻譯需要接受正規培訓，以及有關各方敦促政府出臺行業標準的必要性和迫切性”。

***辯稱失態因“精神分裂”

當地時間12日，這位名爲薩瑪桑卡•姜傑（Thamasanqa Jantjie）的“冒牌”手語翻譯自動現身，接受南非約翰內斯堡《星報》的採訪。他解釋稱自己在臺上失態是因爲突發“精神分裂”，導致無法自控。

“我試着想要控制自己，不讓觀衆發現異常。但是很抱歉，我什麼都做不了，我當時的情況十分危險。”姜傑聲稱，他在臺上進行手語翻譯時，突然無法集中注意力、腦中出現幻聽和幻覺，這才導致他失態，比劃出毫無意義的“手語”。他還說自己現在正在服用治療“精神分裂”的藥物。

當被問及“既然病發爲何不離場休息”時，姜傑回答道：“考慮到（曼德拉追悼大會）的歷史重要性，他認爲即使自己狀態很差也不能離場。“生活是不公平的，這種疾病同樣不公平”，他還補充道，“不瞭解這種病症的人肯定認爲我在撒謊。”

另據法新社報道，早在曼德拉追悼大會之前，姜傑的手語翻譯能力就遭到南非業內人士的質疑。南非手語翻譯協會主席喬翰•布洛烏稱，此前協會收到過幾起投訴稱姜傑的工作表現不佳，協會對姜傑“持保留意見”。