Salary

• Translators earn salaries between $29,000 and $52,000, with the average around $39,000, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The website Glass Door reports that ASL interpreters' salaries fall more or less in the middle of this range, between $35,000 and $38,000. Some ASL interpreters are freelancers, and their salaries are harder to predict. ASL translators who work for institutions such as schools for the hearing impaired or cultural organizations that feature ASL interpretation at events often receive benefits such as health coverage and paid vacations in addition to their salary.
  
  

Duties

• ASL interpreting works like any other kind of interpreting between two languages, with the exception that the interpreter is using her hands and eyes in addition to her ears and voice. While a translator between two voice languages will listen to one and speak the other, an ASL interpreter listens to an aural language with the ears, translates to the hearing impaired person with the hands, reads the hearing impaired person's response with the eyes, and translates it with the voice. Thus the practice of ASL interpretation involves the use of a large part of the brain, and requires total fluency in both ASL and the language into which it is being translated.
  
  

Advantages

• ASL interpreters provide a necessary service to the hearing impaired. Although most hearing impaired people are fluent in ASL or another sign language and communicate with each other effortlessly, they may have difficulty with people outside the hearing impaired community. ASL interpreters gain a feeling of usefulness and satisfaction by fulfilling this need. Translators who enjoy the public spotlight may gravitate toward ASL interpretation of speeches, dramatic presentations and public events. Fluency in ASL is fairly uncommon and provides ASL interpreters with a sense of uniqueness that may augment their self-esteem.
  
  

Disadvantages

• ASL interpretation is a specialized field. If an ASL interpreter should lose his job, he will need to either find another job in this narrow field or seek employment in another field altogether. Career opportunities using ASL interpretation may be few and far between, and aspiring interpreters may need to relocate to pursue career advancement. Interpreters who develop arthritis as they get older may experience pain and difficulty when performing their interpreting duties.