Why do interpreters make faces?

When there is an occasion for Sign Language interpreters to be seen on the news this question seems to be asked of me, I have also had this question slide into my DMs regularly. The media makes our work more widely visible from right here in our hometown of The Woodlands, TX, to nearly any other city, Sign Language interpreters make funny faces. Not to make you giggle but to add deeper more robust meaning to a language without spoken word. That interpreter making that face is doing some difficult work and making a face or “non-manual signals” are key features of grammar and semantics of Sign Language. We call them mouth morphemes, you can call them funny faces. These mouth, lip, and many times other facial structures such as eyebrows being raised bring a clarity to the message the hands are interpreting. Sometimes those hands of ours need a break so to be able to communicate via a wiggle of the nose is much appreciated.

There are a few words in Sign Language that use the same sign, but the meaning is altered when the grammatically appropriate mouth morpheme is used such as in the Signs for LATE vs. NOT YET, when the shape on the mouth is changed the entire meaning is as well. Meaning: that is the goal of any interpreter be it spoken language or Sign Language interpreters we listen for understanding and then convey meaning in the language of our clients. Therefore it is so very important to hire certified Sign Language interpreters, we can help with that!