Well, the comment that you took umbrage with was bob++ saying: “I once had a girlfriend who did simultaneous translations.” :dubious:
I often have deaf students, with a sign language interpreter in the classroom. I am very sarcastic, and it gets communicated with shrugs, body language, and LOTS of eyerolls.
The interpreters have a great sense of humor. When the student has one too, we have a blast. I purposely throw in words like “Unicorn Fart” to see what the signers would do (once that was communicated as “Horn-Head Rear-End Rainbow”)
In theory, this is true, but from my experience–well, you take what you can get. I worked for four years in refugee resettlement with State Department affiliated resettlement agencies, often spending up to five hours a day conducting workshops that were entirely interpreted by paid professionals. The languages were: Arabic, Somali, Haitian-Creole, Spanish, Farsi/Dari, Swahili, Pashto, Urdu, Karen, Tigrinya, Kirundi, and many others. You can imagine, for example, that there aren’t a whole lot of Tigrinya interpreters available. It can’t be just someone who speaks both English and the other language. They need at least some training, and there are varying degrees or levels of the term “professional.” Several times we conducted workshops with trainers on how to interpret professionally, so that the people we did get would employ better practices.
About sarcasm: Our workshops were scripted, and we stayed away from language like that precisely to avoid any confusion, but in the conversation parts, I know I used it from time to time, to make certain points. The conextualization cues for sarcasm can be as much cultural and propositional as paralinguistic, so the context and the content of the conversation can often make the sarcasm clear, without relying on intonation marking.
Still, sometimes I know the clients took the sarcasm literally, and I would have to rephrase. It’s impossible to generalize why, as we had so many different interpreters with so many differing levels of proficiency in English and familiarity with the issues. But I saw it as my responsibility to check for that and backtrack if an attempt at sarcasm (or whatever) didn’t get conveyed correctly. It’s just not realistic or fair to expect an interpreter to always be able to convey a sarcastic remark effectively when there are so many cultural undercurrents directing the discourse in a situation like refugee resettlement. These interpreters couldn’t have been paid at the top of the scale, as these resettlement agencies were charitable organizations. As I said, you take what you can get.
But something important to keep in mind that was mentioned in posts above:***A truly professional interpreter does NOT look at the client. They sit (or stand) slightly behind the client. The client should be looking at the person they are communicating with–NOT the interpreter. (This is a basic interpreting 101 principle.) ***We had a continuing problem with some interpreters who viewed themselves not just as interpreters but as advocates for the clients (because they were from the same small community). You can understand the inclination to do this, as they are so marginalized, both linguistically and as refugees, but it’s highly unprofessional. A professional interpreter does not engage in any side conversation, or interject in any way, no matter how strongly they feel the client may need help. (They’re always allowed to do that after the session.) However, when the interpreter starts to position him- or herself as an advocate or friend of the client, the clients start to talk to the interpreter, which undermines (or can even destroy) the communicative framework of the situation. Yes, it’s always a natural tendency for the client to do this, but before every session we had to remind the interpreters to tell the clients NOT to talk to the interpreters, because the conversation was not with the interpreter. So even though we didn’t understand their language, they were to look at us as they spoke in their language.
So a professional interpreter should NOT be using facial cues to convey sarcasm, or anything else, because the client should not be looking at the interpreter. As mentioned above, there are protocols for indicating that “the speaker is being sarcastic,” if necessary. Also, there are protocols for the interpreter to interrupt the discourse to announce something that has a critical bearing on the successful continuance of the dialog, (such as, “In the client’s language those two concepts are expressed with the same word, so I am now establishing a distinction for the client,” etc.)
Obviously this doesn’t apply to sign language, as digs explains above.
They were being sarcastic.
Sarcasm is much easier to communicate to a deaf person than a Doper…
(seriously, if you’re on The Dope, or any messageboard, do NOT say the opposite of what you mean… assuming everyone will know you were just messin’ with a reductio ad absurdum argument. People will assume you’re a fascist pedo-goat-phile, and quote you a month later… I’ve seen it happen in the Pit)
I don’t have an informed opinion on the difference between translator and interpreter but if you’re looking for the very excellent movie with Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn, it’s called The Interpreter.
I translate between people who are don’t speak both English and Spanish all the time. When I do so I call myself a translator/traductor. 
Again, you are speaking about a specialist usage. Even if a professional interpreter refers to themselves as such, that doesn’t mean that “translator” has to be restricted to someone who translates written communications as opposed to oral ones. There is no dictionary support for such a distinction, and it is not wrong to refer to someone who translates oral communications as a translator.
Since venom is toxic, I’m not sure that helps.
Forty years ago, I can’t recall anyone objecting to referring to dangerous snakes as poisonous. Venomous is a subcategory of poisonous, indicating animals that inject their poison or toxin. At some point, I’m not sure when, someone decided that venomous was an alternative category to poisonous rather than a subset of it, and that poisonous should be restricted to animals or plants that just contain a toxin rather than injecting it. Now when someone mentions a “poisonous snake,” someone will be sure to jump in with this bogus distinction, even though it is not supported by dictionaries.
The distinction between translator and interpreter seems to be similar. Translator is the general term, and interpreter a subcategory of those who deal with oral communication. Now specialists appear to have restricted translator to dealing with written communication, even though this is not supported by dictionaries.
Would a loris be more properly considered poisonous or venomous?
From what I can glean from this, they are neither poisonous nor venomous.
Asia is a large city, divided into many borough with different cultures, but in Japan alley sarcasm isn’t a part of the culture. I think I’ve seen it used a couple of times in anime since I left (about 10 years ago), so it is creeping in, but in general it’s not something that exists. You just have to say what you mean, as you mean it.
In movie subtitles, usually the translator doing the Japanese would just have the person make some bland statement that didn’t really mean anything one way or the other. A sarcastic statement would just confuse the watchers because it would make them think the person was saying the opposite of what was intended, but usually people are sarcastic because the non-sarcastic version would be impolite so reversing the sarcastic statement wouldn’t work either.
For example, this doesn’t really work:
(Sarcastic) Yeah, I’m sure looking forward to seeing you again. -> I hope we never meet.
So they’d translate it more like:
(Sarcastic) Yeah, I’m sure looking forward to seeing you again. -> Goodbye.
Sounds more like just cultural difference. Don’t know about other ones (ie Korean, Japanese etc) but there’s considerably less sarcasm in Chinese culture than in the West (the exception is when it’s expressed as a question - eg, “do you expect me to pay 60000 yuan for this useless shoddy second-hand Toyota?” Etc. Etc. Chinese language often uses that type of sarcastic question.)