What viral Auslan interpreter at Taylor Swift concert wants you to know

This extremely important Aussie will be front and centre of Taylor Swift’s Saturday Sydney show. Here’s why.

She was there when Pink took to the stage in Sydney earlier this month.

And on Saturday, she will be among tens of thousands at Accor Stadium for Taylor Swift’s upcoming Sydney show.

But Marni Van Vliet is not your typical concertgoer.

As an Auslan interpreter, Ms Van Vliet has the “privileged” job of translating live shows to make music accessible to the deaf community.

The 35-year-old went viral after a video of her rocking out while interpreting Pink’s Sydney concert two weeks ago was shared on TikTok.

“You may be cool but you’ll never be as cool as this sign language interpreter at the Pink concert,” the caption on the video read.

The video racked up over 1.2 million views and was flooded with online praise for Ms Van Vliet and the “amazing” work of interpreters.

But while Ms Van Vliet said she loves the positive spotlight on Auslan, she wishes her presence at concerts wasn’t “such a big thing”.

“Any attention to Auslan is a positive because it brings more awareness to the deaf community’s language,” she told news.com.au.

“But I would love a world where everyone just looks at us and goes, ‘Oh, yeah, that’s the interpreter’ and keeps going about their day.”

Marni Van Vliet interpreted at a Pink concert in Sydney earlier this month. Picture: Supplied

Having been an interpreter for over four years and performed at concerts for the likes of Christina Aguilera and rapper 50 Cent, Ms Van Vliet knows just how important it is to have interpreters at live music shows.

“It gives the deaf and hard of hearing community full access to the show,” she explained.

“I’ve had some deaf patrons who said they were so happy after a show because although it was great to see it visually, and it was fun, and the vibrations were there, they don’t have full understanding of the lyrics and the meanings of what the artist is trying to portray (without interpreters).”

On Saturday, she will be one of two interpreters from Auslan Stage Left who will take turns translating over 40 songs during Swift’s three-hour set.

The former dancer has spent about 100 hours preparing the songs after being sent the set list a week ago.

“I’ve Googled the lyrics and meanings of the songs and I’ve made a playlist and listened to them on repeat,” she explained.
“It’s been a lot of Taylor on my Spotify. I listen any minute I have, while I’m cleaning or cooking or in the car.”

But Ms Van Vliet still doesn’t know exactly every song Swift will play on Saturday.

As Swifties will know, the pop star performs a number of surprise songs at each concert.

Ms Van Vliet said she’s usually told the names of the songs the day of the concert but that’s not always the case.

Her colleagues at Swift’s Melbourne show had to think on the fly when they found out the surprise songs for the first time as the pop star sang them on the night.

“They did so well. They had obviously been studying their songs.”

Ms Van Vliet has been an interpreter for over four years. Picture: Supplied

She is pictured making the sign for Auslan. Picture: Supplied

When it comes to translating lyrics, English and Auslan use different grammatical structures, so interpreting isn’t always straightforward.

Instead, Ms Van Vliet will try and communicate the meaning behind the song and use her body language to convey the beat.

“When you have English sentences that don’t really make sense together in songs, our brains work out the meaning. But if you translate it into Auslan, sometimes it doesn’t match and Taylor’s a big one for that because she’s such a storyteller – in a unique, special way. So we take the meaning of the story and translate that into Auslan.”

For example, Swift wrote the song ‘Marjorie’, as a tribute to her grandmother Marjorie Finlay, who died in 2003.

To convey the message, Ms Van Vliet would use different signs to show that Swift is taking about her deceased grandmother in the song.

“It’s a beautiful, sad song, so I would also use my translation and my body language to show the sadness in that song.”

Ms Van Vliet said the demand for interpreters at concerts has been growing in recent years, particularly after Covid when interpreters were seen on TV screens around the country.

But she said there is still a long way to go to improve access for the deaf community.

“The dream is to have a world where there are interpreters at every concert so it’s not a deaf person’s responsibility to look up and see which times or days they can go to a concert,” she said.

“We should put captions on every movie and have interpreters at every concert and then it’s not on the deaf community to do the hard work to try and get their own access. They can just go about their lives.”

Swift kicked off the Sydney leg of her Eras Tour on Friday night, with three more shows at Accor Stadium to come.

She will then jet to Singapore before playing a string of about four dozen shows across Europe.

Originally published as What viral Auslan interpreter at Taylor Swift concert wants you to know