I just submitted a sign language interpreting services request for the spring 2016 semester, when I am likely to take EE 227C and CS 267. The former is the third convex optimization course offered at Berkeley, and the latter is a popular entry-level graduate course on parallel computing and systems.

For this request, though, I also said that I wanted to have a more consistent group of interpreters. This means I would prefer to have the same interpreters currently working now (or those from last semester) to be assigned to those two courses. Just like in the Spring 2015 semester, I have a standard group of three to four interpreters this semester, but strangely enough, none of them were also part of the Spring 2015 group. This is despite how all of the interpreters are assigned out of the same Bay Area company, Partners In Communication LLC.

In addition, there’s been another interpreting issue for this semester in particular. I’m not sure why, but I have had an unusual amount of substitutes. There are two primary interpreters, plus one primary substitute interpreter, but then there have been at least five cases (as far as I can remember, all involving different people) when I’ve had substitutes for substitutes.

This would be frustrating even if I was taking an undergraduate humanities course, but when the material is so technical in my courses, a normal person cannot convey the material clearly on day one. At least with consistent interpreters, they can pick up some of the common terminology. The people who interpret for my Convex Optimization class (EE 227BT) have gotten so used to hearing the words “positive semidefinite matrix” together that they can now understand that sequence when it’s used in other classes. (Positive semidefinite matrices are everywhere in machine learning – I can’t believe I went through undergrad without knowing about them, and now I’m one of their biggest fans.)

Consistent interpreting is something that I admittedly did not think about when requesting for services last semester, but I will remember this for the future. It is already challenging for interpreters to work in STEM courses, so there needs to be consistency so that they improve throughout a semester. Note that in general, I do benefit somewhat from interpreting services despite issues in STEM courses, and in some cases interpreters are essential (as was the case a few weeks ago when an ear infection meant I had to stop wearing my right hearing aid for a week), so this is pretty important to me.

Oh, speaking of interpreting requests, I also need to hope that no one else “strongly suggests” me to drop and/or add a course at the last minute, though admittedly, adding a course results in substantially fewer headaches as compared to dropping a course.