Deaf signers in Flanders and 25 years of Community Interpreting Mieke Van Herreweghe, Universiteit Gent Myriam Vermeerbergen, Research Foundation-Flanders – Flanders / Vrije Universiteit Brussel Looking back on 25 years of Community Interpreting in the Deaf communi- ty in Flanders at least three issues seem to be noteworthy. Linguistic research into Flemish Sign Language has clearly influenced the sign language interpreter training programmes. When the first programmes were started up in the early 1980s, interpreter students were taught Signed Dutch. The shift to Flemish Sign Language came about in the latter half of the 1990s, some years after the first results of Flemish Sign Language re- search were made available in the public domain. A second important factor is the professionalisation of the interpreter. The internationally recognised evolution from a ‘helper philosophy’ via a ‘ma- chine (conduit) philosophy’ to a ‘bilingual-bicultural philosophy’ has also taken place in Flanders. Thirdly, we can see a certain impact of Community Interpreting on Deaf Empowerment. Since it is very hard to exactly identify this and more re- search would be necessary, these will only be brief and tentative statements. 0. Introduction Throughout this paper the term used for the sign language in Flanders will be ‘Flemish Sign Language’ (‘Vlaamse Gebarentaal’ or VGT 1 ). It is used by signers from the Flemish part of Belgium and is the language of a relatively small linguistic minority of about 6,000 Deaf people (Loots et al. 2003). VGT consists of five regional varieties that have developed in and around the different Flemish deaf schools: West-Vlaanderen (West Flanders), Oost- Vlaanderen (East Flanders), Antwerpen (Antwerp), Vlaams-Brabant (Flem- ish Brabant), and Limburg (Limburg) (De Weerdt et al. 2003). 1. The effects of sign language research on Community Interpreting 1.1. Before the mid-1990s In Flanders, as in many other countries and regions, the start of the research on visual-gestural communication in general and sign language in particular is closely linked to deaf children's education. Until about 1980 signs were hardly ever used in deaf education and sign languages even less so. At the end of the 70s, however, special educationalists (originally only a few) be-