Paul Holmes: Interpreter's magic hands speak to thousands

Sign language interpreter Jeremy Borland has thousands of fans on Facebook. Photo / Sarah Ivey

What is staggering about the Christchurch earthquake is the way it seems to keep getting bigger.

In fact, I believe that outside Christchurch we have no idea of its magnitude. We watch the hours of television coverage and there is always something new to be dealt with, some new building that needs to come down, some new obstruction that needs to be dealt with and of course, the death toll is horrific.

You look at the pictures of the dead. Ordinary people - well, no one is ordinary, I know - but just random, innocent people who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, their lives taken in a second.

There are endless stories of the goodness of people, the goodness of humanity, heroism, sacrifice and generosity. Amid the chaos and the destruction there is much to cheer us.

Of course, there is a dark side too. The looting of people's homes is despicable. But on the whole, people seem to have behaved brilliantly.

Who will ever forget the sight of the people being lowered out of the Forsyth Barr building with the mountain guide's ropes? Or the young man picking up those huge lengths of concrete and tossing them behind him as if they were bricks. His modesty simply enhances the legend.

While the stories of the work people did in those first hours have us shaking our heads in wonder, there is much to cheer us too.

The leadership through the response to the earthquake has looked most impressive. Bob Parker I mentioned last week as being the right man at the right time.

If he could, dear Bob would talk his city back into life. If only talking could make it so.

What a task they - and we - all have rebuilding Christchurch. For the life of me, I don't know what they're going to do about the CBD.

We probably first have to ask ourselves if the CBD should remain where it is, given the damage it sustains in earthquakes.

Perhaps the answer might be an international architectural competition to design a new city.

Do they ever work, designed cities? Canberra does, apparently.

The only thing people complain about with Canberra is the cold. But no one ever says, "Oh how I long to be in Canberra." No one ever wrote a song about Canberra in the springtime.

But the leadership across the board in Christchurch reassures the rest of us that New Zealand can cope with a massive civil defence crisis.

The Christchurch leadership oozes efficiency, professionalism and authority.

I'm particularly impressed with the Christchurch police commander, Superintendent Dave Cliff. He is calm and serious yet a warm communicator. You feel comfortable watching him. You know he's in control.

I like the bloke from Orion who tells us what's buggered. He looks exhausted. They all do.

Television can be a phoney, shallow dolled-up-to-the-nines bitch of a thing, but it can also be real.

I used to say to people when they asked me how to behave on television, "Just be yourself. If you're not, the camera will see right through you. Be real and it'll see you're real."

And those men and women in Christchurch are simply being real and they're as tired as hell and we feel for them. They are Kiwis doing their best for their people and their city.

Many of those on the coal face there are not Kiwis, of course. And they're still doing their best.

The response of the international community is specially moving, both in the form of the relief money countries are sending and the skilled people they're lending us,about 900 overseas personnel.

But the person I cannot take my eyes off this week is Jeremy Borland, the sign language interpreter at the Christchurch news briefings.

He is magnificent to watch. His face is going at it too and you can lip read him quite easily.

I find myself trying to learn sign. I watched him intently the other night. There is only about a two-second lag between what the speaker says and Jeremy's interpretation. I made some inquiries. He is known for the speed at which he can work.

About 450,000 New Zealanders are deaf or hearing impaired in some way. Many of these are just people getting old. But about 30,000 New Zealanders regularly use and rely on sign language.

If you are deaf and you are arrested you can demand a sign language interpreter in court but that really is the only place officialdom in normal life goes out of its way to recognise our third official language, which it became in late 2005. I had no idea until this week that signing was our third official language.

It seems shameful that only now, five years on, do we suddenly see a sign language interpreter at important emergency briefings. I understand that after the recent Queensland hurricane and the Christchurch emergency, the New Zealand deaf community stood up. They'd seen the service the deaf and hearing impaired got during the Australian crisis.

My understanding is that the media here objected to the presence of a sign language interpreter. Shame on us. They didn't want a signer in the shots. The deaf community went all the way up to the Prime Minister's office and the directive came down.

In fact, Jeremy Borland is brilliant to watch. He now has 6000 fans on Facebook, as Bob Parker generously acknowledged the other night.

Jeremy's introduction to the world of sign language and the deaf came early. His sister, Talitha, is deaf so Jeremy grew up signing. AUT offer a diploma in sign language and Jeremy graduated in 2002.

In an article in the New Zealand Herald in 2005, Jeremy said the role of a sign language interpreter "relies on very accurate exchange of information, which is often at quite a demanding language register. Complicated concepts, ideas and processes need to be discussed."

This is a revelation to me and shows my ignorance. I always imagined signing would have a fairly limited range. Why I always thought that, I've no idea. I wonder whether there shouldn't be a signer at Prime Ministerial press conferences. Why shouldn't there be?

Perhaps in Parliament itself, during Question Time? Probably not. A signer can probably only interpret someone speaking sense.

Oh, and after my letter to Christchurch in this paper last weekend, I received many messages of thanks from people there.

On Facebook I heard from Sonya Pegg. "Dear Paul, Thanks for your letter. Working on a reply, just can't find a pen, the place is a bit of a mess. Will get back to you shortly ... Just a quick note to say we got your letter ... love - Christchurch.

And I'll say it again. I think our media coverage of the Christchurch earthquake has been excellent right across the board.

There has been some great story-telling. But of course, many of those stories are impossible to tell badly.