Miss-Delectable
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http://www.ukraine-observer.com/articles/213/754
In October, Time Magazine Europe recognized Ukrainian sign-language interpreter Natalya Dmytruk as one of its thirty-six European heroes for 2005. The 48-year-old resident of Kyiv rose to fame last November, during the height of Ukraine's Orange Revolution, when she informed deaf viewers of the main state television channel that broadcasters "are lying" to them.
The runoff in the presidential race between then opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko and the handpicked choice of the outgoing authorities, now former Premier Viktor Yanukovych, had just taken place. Contrary to the belief of hundreds of thousands of ordinary people who had already gone out on to the streets, media controlled by outgoing President Leonid Kuchma and his cronies were claiming Yanukovych to be the winner.
Dmytruk recalls: "At the time, I was working at UT-1. And that channel, you probably already know, broadcast information that suited certain people. And that was very unpleasant. To know what was going on in Ukraine overall and to have to translate that was not very pleasant. You know, I understand the professional ethic. I was supposed to translate word for word. But it turned out that with the revolution and Independence Square and all that, and I was watching (opposition) Channel Five. To me it was all kind of, well in short, I understood."
And thanks to Dmytruk, so did an estimated 100,000 deaf Ukrainians who were watching her on the morning of November 25th understand. These included her parents, who are both deaf. "You know, my parents and I phone each other by fax. My parents have a fax at home. I understood that they were getting little information. That's just my parents. But how many deaf are there in Ukraine, in small towns, everywhere? After all, they watch only UT-1. The fact is that you and I can come home and run through the channels, fixing our eyes on the channel we find most interesting, that we believe. The deaf didn't have such a choice. And that bothered me."
Dmytruk said her decision wasn't spontaneous. She had been attending rallies on Independence Square like a lot of other people in the capital. Some might say that she had gotten caught up in the moment. Others maintain that she defined the moment: only a day after her silent revolt, over 250 of her co-workers at U1-1 joined in a protest strike against censorship.
Dmytruk herself plays down the political motivation. "I knew that not all of them (the deaf) voted the same (for Yushchenko). Nevertheless, I wanted to draw their attention to the fact that something wrong was happening. That's what pushed me to do it."
Another motivation for her actions can be found in her upbringing. Dmytruk describes her father as "self-educated." Although he lost his hearing at the age of four, he taught himself to speak without an accent. Now, 77 years old, having raised his family on the wages of an ordinary laborer, he gives educational lectures to the deaf at a cultural center in Kyiv and "packs the hall every time," says Dmytruk.
As for her mother, "you know, I grew up in a house where there was always the smell of tasty food, where it was always clean and comfortable. My mother was very domestic." It was Dmytruk's parents who taught her the language she would rebel in, and who were foremost in her thoughts when she did rebel. "They are so principled, that I love them more than anything."
Although Dmytruk has been 'bilingual' from a very young age, she says she "never dreamt of becoming an interpreter. It just turned out that way.
I was invited to give it a try and it worked out." She eventually attended a special school, where she studied the technique "in full measure."
Altogether, she has around thirty years of professional experience. Much of this has been teaching in schools for deaf children. Most recently, she accompanied Ukraine's national team of deaf athletes to Melbourne Australia, where they took first place. "Thanks to this work, I have traveled a lot," she says with a smile. Kyiv even has a theater for the deaf, and Dmytruk has worked there too.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, many deaf mutes ended up on the streets as prostitutes or beggars. What was a difficult period for everyone else was all the harder for them. There was a Russian film made in 1998 about the world they live in called The Land of the Deaf. "They stand out because they are unusual. They look unusual because they communicate with their hands," says Dmytruk, who explains that some people are born deaf, while others go deaf later on. The latter can be treated but results are not so promising or as likely.
In Ukraine, jobs are also hard to come by, especially if one is black listed as a traitor. Unlike some heroes, Dmytruk didn't get to bask in the light of praise immediately after she had performed her feat. "What happened later was terrible. For several days, I woke up in a cold sweat. I was worried because I had been doing that kind of work for a long time. The political opposition praised her, but it was far from clear at the time that they would come to power.
Dmytruk did, however, receive immediate recognition from her co-workers. "After the broadcast, I got up from the table and basically told all my colleagues what I had done, because they don't know sign language, and I didn't have the right to deceive them." Their response was: '"You know, we noticed that something wasn't right.' I had been working there for a long time and they had gotten used to my gestures and hand movements. Their reaction was a surprise to me. They congratulated me: "My goodness, well done.'"
As for the management at UT-1, "they did absolutely nothing ... because they understood that their days were numbered there and that there would probably be a new management, and so they didn't react at all," says Dmytruk.
But as with much else from the Orange Revolution, things took an ironic turn last summer: "They forced us to take a vacation, the new management, as strange as it seems, the revolutionary one, by the way." Even stranger was that her new boss had transferred from the bastion of freedom of speech - Channel Five. "He started behaving strangely. Honestly, I don't understand him to this day. I'm not angry with him. He has a right to his views. He thought that sign language translators ruin the television picture ... He thought that this hurts ratings, and so it would be better if we left."
Although the salary wasn't much anyway, Dmytruk said she tried to convince her boss to reconsider, but, as she put it, " it was like talking to the wall." Then she was offered a job at One Plus One, which had long been considered one of the channels controlled by Kuchma's cronies. "For me it was a real surprise and such a pleasant one," Dmytruk emphasizes.
Dmytruk got another surprise in May, when Vital Voices Global Partnership, a group of female American human-rights activists including Senator Hillary Clinton, invited Dmytruk to a function in Washington. Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright hugged Dmytruk as she entered the hall and said in Russian: "Natalya, I'm proud of you."
So where does Dmytruk go from here? "To work," she says. Ever since her silent rise to fame, "it's been up and down. For some reason someone always turns up looking for me and wants to talk."
Regarding her short stint as a revolutionary, Dmytruk says she doesn't regret a thing but "I understand that as an interpreter, I don't have the right to diverge even an inch in either direction, but only to translate what I hear. I broke the rules. But I always said and will always say that that was the only time - a one-time act."
In October, Time Magazine Europe recognized Ukrainian sign-language interpreter Natalya Dmytruk as one of its thirty-six European heroes for 2005. The 48-year-old resident of Kyiv rose to fame last November, during the height of Ukraine's Orange Revolution, when she informed deaf viewers of the main state television channel that broadcasters "are lying" to them.
The runoff in the presidential race between then opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko and the handpicked choice of the outgoing authorities, now former Premier Viktor Yanukovych, had just taken place. Contrary to the belief of hundreds of thousands of ordinary people who had already gone out on to the streets, media controlled by outgoing President Leonid Kuchma and his cronies were claiming Yanukovych to be the winner.
Dmytruk recalls: "At the time, I was working at UT-1. And that channel, you probably already know, broadcast information that suited certain people. And that was very unpleasant. To know what was going on in Ukraine overall and to have to translate that was not very pleasant. You know, I understand the professional ethic. I was supposed to translate word for word. But it turned out that with the revolution and Independence Square and all that, and I was watching (opposition) Channel Five. To me it was all kind of, well in short, I understood."
And thanks to Dmytruk, so did an estimated 100,000 deaf Ukrainians who were watching her on the morning of November 25th understand. These included her parents, who are both deaf. "You know, my parents and I phone each other by fax. My parents have a fax at home. I understood that they were getting little information. That's just my parents. But how many deaf are there in Ukraine, in small towns, everywhere? After all, they watch only UT-1. The fact is that you and I can come home and run through the channels, fixing our eyes on the channel we find most interesting, that we believe. The deaf didn't have such a choice. And that bothered me."
Dmytruk said her decision wasn't spontaneous. She had been attending rallies on Independence Square like a lot of other people in the capital. Some might say that she had gotten caught up in the moment. Others maintain that she defined the moment: only a day after her silent revolt, over 250 of her co-workers at U1-1 joined in a protest strike against censorship.
Dmytruk herself plays down the political motivation. "I knew that not all of them (the deaf) voted the same (for Yushchenko). Nevertheless, I wanted to draw their attention to the fact that something wrong was happening. That's what pushed me to do it."
Another motivation for her actions can be found in her upbringing. Dmytruk describes her father as "self-educated." Although he lost his hearing at the age of four, he taught himself to speak without an accent. Now, 77 years old, having raised his family on the wages of an ordinary laborer, he gives educational lectures to the deaf at a cultural center in Kyiv and "packs the hall every time," says Dmytruk.
As for her mother, "you know, I grew up in a house where there was always the smell of tasty food, where it was always clean and comfortable. My mother was very domestic." It was Dmytruk's parents who taught her the language she would rebel in, and who were foremost in her thoughts when she did rebel. "They are so principled, that I love them more than anything."
Although Dmytruk has been 'bilingual' from a very young age, she says she "never dreamt of becoming an interpreter. It just turned out that way.
I was invited to give it a try and it worked out." She eventually attended a special school, where she studied the technique "in full measure."
Altogether, she has around thirty years of professional experience. Much of this has been teaching in schools for deaf children. Most recently, she accompanied Ukraine's national team of deaf athletes to Melbourne Australia, where they took first place. "Thanks to this work, I have traveled a lot," she says with a smile. Kyiv even has a theater for the deaf, and Dmytruk has worked there too.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, many deaf mutes ended up on the streets as prostitutes or beggars. What was a difficult period for everyone else was all the harder for them. There was a Russian film made in 1998 about the world they live in called The Land of the Deaf. "They stand out because they are unusual. They look unusual because they communicate with their hands," says Dmytruk, who explains that some people are born deaf, while others go deaf later on. The latter can be treated but results are not so promising or as likely.
In Ukraine, jobs are also hard to come by, especially if one is black listed as a traitor. Unlike some heroes, Dmytruk didn't get to bask in the light of praise immediately after she had performed her feat. "What happened later was terrible. For several days, I woke up in a cold sweat. I was worried because I had been doing that kind of work for a long time. The political opposition praised her, but it was far from clear at the time that they would come to power.
Dmytruk did, however, receive immediate recognition from her co-workers. "After the broadcast, I got up from the table and basically told all my colleagues what I had done, because they don't know sign language, and I didn't have the right to deceive them." Their response was: '"You know, we noticed that something wasn't right.' I had been working there for a long time and they had gotten used to my gestures and hand movements. Their reaction was a surprise to me. They congratulated me: "My goodness, well done.'"
As for the management at UT-1, "they did absolutely nothing ... because they understood that their days were numbered there and that there would probably be a new management, and so they didn't react at all," says Dmytruk.
But as with much else from the Orange Revolution, things took an ironic turn last summer: "They forced us to take a vacation, the new management, as strange as it seems, the revolutionary one, by the way." Even stranger was that her new boss had transferred from the bastion of freedom of speech - Channel Five. "He started behaving strangely. Honestly, I don't understand him to this day. I'm not angry with him. He has a right to his views. He thought that sign language translators ruin the television picture ... He thought that this hurts ratings, and so it would be better if we left."
Although the salary wasn't much anyway, Dmytruk said she tried to convince her boss to reconsider, but, as she put it, " it was like talking to the wall." Then she was offered a job at One Plus One, which had long been considered one of the channels controlled by Kuchma's cronies. "For me it was a real surprise and such a pleasant one," Dmytruk emphasizes.
Dmytruk got another surprise in May, when Vital Voices Global Partnership, a group of female American human-rights activists including Senator Hillary Clinton, invited Dmytruk to a function in Washington. Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright hugged Dmytruk as she entered the hall and said in Russian: "Natalya, I'm proud of you."
So where does Dmytruk go from here? "To work," she says. Ever since her silent rise to fame, "it's been up and down. For some reason someone always turns up looking for me and wants to talk."
Regarding her short stint as a revolutionary, Dmytruk says she doesn't regret a thing but "I understand that as an interpreter, I don't have the right to diverge even an inch in either direction, but only to translate what I hear. I broke the rules. But I always said and will always say that that was the only time - a one-time act."