There are over 500,000 deaf people in the United States , but the only time we hear about deaf culture is when someone is making up sign language at presidential funerals , rioting , or teaching kids on Sesame Street . As a result, the average person has no idea what being deaf involves, and therefore life can get downright weird for anyone who can't hear like the rest of you. Well, I'm a sign language interpreter and an American Sign Language (ASL) graduate, and I'll try to give you a glimpse of how strange things can get ...

5 A Few Botched Hand Motions Can Ruin Your Life

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A couple of years ago, during a sign language performance in a music video, some complained that the interpreter accidentally signed the word "tampon" instead of "appear." How is that possible? Well, here's the ASL sign for "appear," according to the online guide at American Sign Language University:

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Yeah, you can use your imagination there. In one context, that sign can in fact mean "to appear," and in another it can mean, well, to insert something.

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Hey, remember that crazy story of a dangerous attempted murderer getting on stage with President Obama because he pretended to be a sign language interpreter for Nelson Mandela's funeral? And how it turned out it wasn't even the first time he'd done that? That happened because so few people know a damned thing about sign language that a crazy guy making random hand motions fooled the security details of multiple nations' heads of state. And while that's just an oddball story to you, this is the kind of thing that can ruin a deaf person's life.

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Let me give you a less hilarious example: I have a friend whose sister is deaf. She was in the hospital for a simple operation, and the sign language interpreter, like many, wasn't qualified to be doing it and accidentally told her the doctor had botched the surgery. When my friend arrived, her sister was tearfully saying her goodbyes. And if you're wondering how you could accidentally convey something so radically incorrect, see the "tampon" situation above.

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"I swear I was just talking about astrology."

Translators now have a national registry and a professional code of conduct, but, obviously, progress is slow. Many organizations don't have things like "ASL tested" or "vaguely qualified" people, and that can lead to screw-ups in pretty important places. Like courtrooms. Cases have been thrown out after the judgment when the tiniest amount of digging revealed that the interpreter wasn't qualified and botched the interpretation. Imagine if the lunatic from Mandela's funeral wound up translating your testimony at trial. And even when the interpreter knows what he's doing, legal interpreting is complicated as hell -- something like the Miranda rights can take up to 20 minutes to get across. The potential for disaster there is huge.

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All of this means that ...