Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. --- Arrived here after an hour and a half flight from Phnom Penh on Air Asia, Asia's new budget airline. KLIA, the international airport is quite a confusing place, made worse not by the fact that no one here speaks English, the majority do, but by the fact that I wouldn't accept the fact.

I'm here to attend an interpreter's symposium. Typical of developing interpreting communities and developing Deaf communities this symposium had a hurge range of sign language students and interpreters, mostly sign language students and the remainder were people who "interpret" in religious settings. It's hard to understand why in a majority Hindu, Muslim and Buddhist nation such a large percentage of the people interested in interpreting are Christians.

I'm here with Vichet and Veasna two Deaf Development Program interpreters and their support staff Tashi and Justin both Deaf. The dominant sign language here is an American Sign Language descendant. So Justin and Tashi are able to provide interpreting services for the two Cambodlian Sign interpreters. It's interesting to see Deaf people providing interpreting services to sign language interpreters. It's a righteous turn of the tables.

Today's discussion centered on the needs of nascent interpreters. Because the interpreting community here is small, the interpreting servcies for the eight or nine deaf participants mirrored that fact. Working interpreters had multiple roles, sometimes at the same time in this conference. So working interpreters switched out of roles, frequently more than once every 15 minutes. It's something that happens not only in Asia, but also in Hawaii. It's something I find disconcerting given that Deaf people then have only limited access to the workshop interrupted by the interpreters' frequent other roles. In addition, the working interpreters felt free to voice their own opiinions as part of the interpreting role and often censored Deaf people by choosing who could speak or not. Some things don't change regardless of where you are.