A atuação de intérpretes de Libras em cultos cristãos protestantes: práticas e desafios

Abstract

This work aims to understand the challenges of intermodal interpretation from Portuguese into Libras in Protestant Christian services. The religious sphere, especially the historical Protestant Christian religions, were for a long time, due to missionary work with the deaf started in the 1980s, training environments for most sign language interpreters in Brazil since, before the mid-2000s, there were no higher education courses to train these professionals. They Therefore, there is little research that maps or describes the work of these professionals in religious contexts. The approach used for this research was qualitative, articulating theoretical references derived from Bakhtinian contributions and from the studies of translation and interpretation of sign language. As a methodological device, we used the semi-open interview, which allows the participants to be questioned based on a previous script, enabling interaction with the interviewer. We interviewed two Libras interpreters from two Protestant Christian institutions: one from a historical church and the other from a Pentecostal church. The analysis was based on Campos' proposal (2018; 2021), which proposes a crossing of verticality, in which the themes are given by the interviewees in their singularities, with horizontality, in which the researcher seeks to find generalities through the collective subject analyzed from its exotopic perspective. As a result of the horizontal analysis, one can notice the similarities and differences between the answers of the candidates, highlighting the challenges around the terminological interpretation and the specific signs present in the religious context, the position of the interpreter during the meetings and the relationships established between interpreters>deaf and interpreters>adors during the interpretation from Portuguese into Libras in Christian worship. It is hoped that this research will contribute to the training of future interpreters in the religious context of Protestant Christianity.