This new collection examines several facets of signed language interpreting. Claudia Angelelli’s study confirms that conference, courtroom, and medical interpretation can no longer be seen as a two-party conversation with an “invisible” interpreter, but as a three-party conversation in which the interpreter plays an active role. Laura M. Sanheim defines different turn-taking elements in a medical setting as two overlapping conversations, one between the patient and the interpreter and the other between the interpreter and the medical professional.

 

     In her analysis of discourse at a Deaf revival service, Mary Ann Richey demonstrates how Deaf presenters and audiences interact even in formal settings, creating special challenges for interpreters. Jemina Napier shares her findings on the nature and occurrence of omissions by interpreters in Australian Sign Language and English exchanges. Elizabeth Winston and Christine Monikowski describe different strategies used by interpreters to indicate topic shifts when interpreting into American Sign Language and when transliterating. The study concludes with Bruce Sofinski’s analysis of nonmanual elements used by interpreters in sign language transliteration.

Policy Debates on Reprogenetics takes an in-depth look at recent public policy debates over stem cell research and therapeutic cloning in Great Britain and Germany in order to determine the effect of such debates on the progress of scientific knowledge. Svea Luise Herrmann argues that debates about government policy do not tend to lead to more societal and political control over scientific research; rather, the discussions, when framed as questions of ethics, allow societies to air anxieties without retarding or challenging scientific progress. As our understanding of genetics continues to grow, this volume will be a useful resource for scientists and policy makers alike.

The lands bordering the tidal river Thames and the Thames Estuary have historically been highly vulnerable to marine flooding. The most severe of these floods derive from North Sea storm surges, when wind and tide combine to drive huge quantities of water against the coast, as happened to devastating effect in 1953. This project seeks to understand the occurrence of storm flooding in the past, and to explore the ways in which people have responded to the threat. The project draws upon rich surviving documentary sources to study the impact of storm flooding upon the reclaimed marshlands bordering the tidal Thames and its estuary during the period c.1250-1550. Year-by-year accounts of the management of riverside properties have been examined and the degree to which reclaimed land was lost to the sea during the later Middle Ages assessed. The impact of population decline and agrarian recession upon the economics of coastal and river-side defence has been considered. The flood threat to medieval London’s low-lying suburbs has been investigated and the possibility that the long-term flooding of lands down-river spared the city the worst effects of North Sea storm surges explored. Parallels have also been sought in the modern policy of managed retreat or realignment. The volume concludes with an overview of the multi-faceted work of the Thames Discovery Programme, which is increasing our knowledge of many aspects of the Thames’s past, from medieval fish traps, through nineteenth-century shipbuilding, to the Blitz, which posed a new and very real flood threat to the mid-twentieth century metropolis.