Ella Wehrmeyer

Sign language interpreting corpora constitute important resources for both research on interpreting features and interpreter training. However, the sign language interpreter’s ‘habitus’ (Bourdieu 1993) is threatened on the one hand by the increasing encroachment of artificial intelligence, and on the other, by the steady decline of Deaf communities (Johnston 2004). In addition, reducing sign languages to digital form is time-consuming, potentially expensive and technologically challenging, requiring specialist expertise. I offer an overview of corpus-based/driven sign language interpreting research (where are we now?), and examine key challenges and opportunities in constructing and maintaining sign language corpora (where do we want to go?). Drawing on evolutionary biology, I argue that no population is indefinitely sustainable, but that specialists – whether animals or interpreting scholars – can survive in increasingly hostile environments through cooperation, adaptability, resourcefulness and ingenuity. Ultimately however, the key to survival lies in the extent to which sign language interpreting corpora are able to evolve, in order to remain both relevant and necessary.