ABSTRACT
This chapter fills the void in pre-professional history of signed language interpreting in the United Kingdom and United States. Through qualitative survey of foundational texts from Deaf studies and interpreting praxis, supported by legal commentary and archival sources, this research lays out the first pedigree of sign language interpreting based in Anglo–American common law. Courts are an ideal seat of inquiry for a study, as both the best-documented venue, and the birthplace of protocols that have since been applied throughout interpreting practice. The problem of perpetually- recycled secondary material is resolved with greater attention to primary and contemporaneous citations. From the medieval practice of assigning curators for the management of property and tutors for the personal caretaking of deaf wards, the role of interpreter matured over the centuries as an intermediary who communicates effectively with a signing deaf party who enacts their own legal agency.
