Jess Veal has taken jobs in so many places, it almost sounds like the start of a joke: what do the Himalayan mountains, the set of a UK reality show and a Freemason hall have in common?
“All kinds of weird stuff goes on in my job,” Veal says. She’s been a licensed sign language interpreter for 15 years now, and she goes pretty much anywhere there are deaf people – which is, of course, pretty much everywhere. “Water rafting down the Indian rivers, seeing dead bodies flow past, interpreting in the Alps at deaf ski schools.” The list goes on. “Oyster farming in Jersey, the House of Parliament, for the Queen, for Stephen Hawking – for anything where you can imagine there might need to be a sign language interpreter.”
“People think deaf people can’t access music, but that’s actually wrong.”
In May last year, the 35-year-old London native even interpreted King Charles’ coronation, standing on a viewing platform as rain pounded down. “I have never, ever been so wet in my life. My underwear was wet,” Veal recalls. “And you’re just sitting there doing sign language, and he just drives past in the car, and, you’re like, oh wow, we got a new king.”
Veal, who moved to Berlin in 2021, is fluent in British Sign Language (BSL), but can also sign some American Sign Language (ASL) and German Sign Language (Deutsche Gebärdensprache, or DGS). “Many people think sign languages are the same all over the world, but they’re not – they evolved very independently over many hundreds of years in different parts of the world. Each country has its own language, and within that, there’s many dialects as well,” Veal says. Surprisingly, British and American sign language are very different; ASL and DGS actually bear more similarities than the two versions of English.
Veal has been signing as long as she can remember. (“Before I was speaking, I think.”) She’s what’s called a CODA – a child of deaf adults. Some of her earliest memories are watching her mother at the kitchen table, signing to her friends. “Of course, my signing wasn’t great as a kid, it was very just like, home sign, sloppy. You learn to become better,” says Veal.
Hearing children of deaf parents are usually deputised as unofficial interpreters from a young age, but becoming a licensed one requires, on average, seven years of training – even if you’re already considered fluent. “Ultimately people’s lives could be at risk, if you do medical stuff,” Veal explains. “There’s a lot of guidelines, an ethical code that you’re supposed to abide by: being neutral, not taking anyone’s side, only accepting work that’s within your competency.”
Veal’s specialisation is the film and television industry, interpreting for shoots, festivals, screenings – anything to do with media. “I also work behind the scenes, so maybe helping deaf film producers, or deaf people on set within the rest of the crew. Could be a deaf makeup artist, and they want to communicate with the actor in the film – any kind of film role, and also within the editing process as well. I do a lot of transcription for captioning or audio description.” When the ninth season of the UK’s Married At First Sight added a deaf contestant, Veal was tapped to spend three months flying between London and Berlin, interpreting all the drama for him.
The job involves “so much” prep work, she admits: “I’ll have to read a script for days before to get the right lingo, to make sure I’m translating it accurately.” Veal also occasionally interprets gigs at music festivals – last year, she did Glastonbury for electronic producer Fred again.. – which can make the advance work trickier. “The big artists, they don’t like to reveal their set list. So sometimes you literally get the set list half an hour before the show, maybe not even that. And sometimes they just wing it and whack in a song,” she says. Even with an ear feed, it’s not always possible amid a roaring festival crowd to hear the lyrics – but that’s fine. “A lot of deaf people say they just want to see the interpreter just like grooving to the beat, just embodying the song and how it feels,” says Veal. “That’s still giving them access to the song without necessarily knowing every single word.”
My mind is thinking in sign language, and it takes me a while to come out of that.
This is indicative of how most sign interpretation goes. “We’re taught to interpret the meaning. You don’t really interpret the words that are being said literally, because in two different languages, often there isn’t an equivalence,” she explains. “For instance, like the phrase ‘raining cats and dogs’. If you’re going to sign that in sign language, it just wouldn’t make sense at all.” This makes interpreting in multilingual Berlin, for the city’s roughly 6,000 deaf people, a unique challenge. “Berlin’s a very interesting place, because ultimately, English is used a lot here for a lot of the big events,” Veal explains. Not many interpreters specialise in English to DGS, or German to ASL or BSL. “Sometimes it requires different types of interpreters to be there.”
When I ask Veal if there’s an equivalent to Denglisch for deaf Berliners, she laughs. Much in the way that Berliners speaking English might throw ‘Kino’ or ‘Kita’ into a sentence, many of Veal’s clients and friends use a mix of languages. “You kind of just put in references, like Sonnenallee or U-Bahn. You’ll be signing in BSL or ASL, but then you chuck in DGS sign,” she says. “Like, for instance, the sign for Alexanderplatz is so funny, it’s this.” Veal raises her middle finger, representing the TV tower but also flipping me off. “Like oh yeah, I’ll see you down at Alexanderplatz.” She flips me off again.
Sign languages, she adds, are much like spoken ones – they’re fluid, expanding as people create slang and new expressions. “Signs for technology are being created all the time – you’ve got WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok.” When she’s working on a longer job, she’ll notice that after a few days, inside jokes have been created. “When I was working on a film shoot with some deaf people, we decided that we were just going to start signing with our little fingers, like this.” She signs with her pinky finger raised. “Even with my deaf friends, when my mates come to visit, by the end of the weekend you just have funny little signs that you’re using.”
Last time her friends came to visit, Veal – who is also a DJ – took them to Berghain. “People think deaf people can’t access music, but that’s actually wrong,” she says, noting that they simply experience music in a different way. “They had the best time. Because not only is it very visually stimulating, but the speakers – my friend, she was literally backed up against the Berghain speakers, just feeling the music in her body, all the frequencies, through the floor.” Veal’s hope is to merge her side passion with her professional life, bringing deaf people and the music world closer by increasing accessibility through interpretation and captioning, as well as things like VJing and SubPacs. “I don’t ever want people to presume that as a deaf person they can’t access club culture or music culture, because that’s such a myth,” she says.
Veal’s world, of course, is already pretty blended. In spoken conversation she has a tendency to gesticulate, as if her hands (which aren’t insured – I asked) still want to be part of the discussion. After a job, it can take her a while to turn off the instinct to interpret. “My mind is thinking in sign language, and it takes me a while to come out of that,” she says. “It’s really discombobulating. And I’m just trying to remember that I don’t need to use my hands, I can just speak.” Veal’s mother and stepfather visited a few weeks ago, and when they left she went “straight to Heideglühen”, where she found herself still signing in the club.
The physicality of sign language is part of why the profession has a high rate of burnout, Veal says. “You have to really practise self care… we’re at high risk of RSI [Repetitive Strain Injuries], shoulder and back injuries and things [like that].” Veal gets regular massages, exercises and meditates, to combat the sometimes emotionally challenging nature of the job. Interpreting is a kind of osmosis – you’re a stand-in for not only language but mood, tone, feeling. “I’ll leave a booking like, why am I stressed and angry? I’m fine, like nothing’s actually wrong. I just did my job.” Veal says. “But because your body is so linked to your mind, you’ve got quite an adrenaline going on, particularly if it’s something very heated… it could even be a film set where there’s been an argument, and then I leave and I feel stressed. And actually, it’s because you’re experiencing the emotion through your body.”
Many people think sign languages are the same all over the world, but they’re not
“The most challenging part of the job, if I’m honest, is that sometimes you’re not yourself because you are an interpreter. You’re not allowed to give your opinion. You’re not allowed to be Jess,” she adds. “Sometimes that can be really draining, not having a voice. You’re always the voice for whoever you’re communicating for.” Though Veal makes a point to say that people nearly always thank her at the end of the day, that they’re always grateful, that it’s a job that feels impactful, it remains taxing to put herself in the background. “You’ll be in a setting – ‘Oh, everyone else, want a cup of tea, cup of coffee?’ But the interpreter is just the one that’s speaking, and so they never think to ask you.”
Since moving to Berlin, Veal has found a better balance. Her work in London was “all-consuming”, though it helped establish her reputation as an interpreter capable of handling high-profile work. “I do a lot less of that now, living here – that was one of the reasons I wanted to move away from the UK,” she says. “I was all over the place – work, work, work. Whereas here, I have to say no to stuff, because there’s physically a geographical barrier. I have way better work-life balance now, and I feel a lot happier.”
These days, some of her biggest clients are in gaming; Germany hosts Gamescom, the world’s largest video game convention, and Veal interprets for it every year, something that’s given her “a whole new appreciation” for the craft. Most of her work comes to her (somewhat ironically) by word of mouth. “I’m really lucky. I’ve worked all over the world, all different types of industry, all different companies: BBC, ARD, Netflix, Apple, Sky, you name it,” Veal says.
It’s obvious, talking to her, that she’s interested in sharing not just the details of her job but deaf culture and representation in general. She tells me about her sign name, the custom gesture that every person in the deaf community has, and which is traditionally given to you by a deaf person. It typically incorporates a person’s character traits; hers looks like holding the straps of a backpack, because she’s a big hiker. “Sign names are very important, and they’re a real hallmark of deaf culture. So you have your real name, then you have your sign name, and that’s who you are,” she says.
Veal also debunks some misconceptions, explaining that most deaf people don’t consider themselves disabled and that deafness is a spectrum, from the frequencies they can hear to the communication methods they might use. She also tells me that deaf people are generally sick of being asked to demonstrate swear words. “Because, of course, so often [people] are like, how do you sign, ‘you fucking shit?’ That’s the kind of normie thing that they get asked a lot. So we try to deviate away from that – because let’s be honest, you know the signs for the rude stuff.” (She shows me anyway, signing ‘fuck’ and ‘wanker’.) “They’re kind of visual – they’re what you expect.”
Veal has a more earnest message for people who want to learn sign language, which boils down to: please do. There’s a massive shortage of people who can sign, and high demand for interpreters. “But please, we just ask to learn from a deaf person,” Veal says. “It really should be coming from the deaf person themselves, to ensure that deaf people are employed. Without deaf people, we don’t have a job – so we always want to be putting them first.”
- Follow Jess on Instagram for resources about deafness and learning sign language. For more DGS signs, visit their website or download their app.
