Deanna L. Hammond was a Canadian

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

-American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 translator and linguist. She led the Linguistic Services section of the US Library of Congress

Library of Congress

The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...

. During the 1990s, she taught Spanish

Spanish language

Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

 translation at George Mason University

George Mason University

George Mason University is a public university based in unincorporated Fairfax County, Virginia, United States, south of and adjacent to the city of Fairfax. Additional campuses are located nearby in Arlington County, Prince William County, and Loudoun County...

 and at American University

American University

American University is a private, Methodist, liberal arts, and research university in Washington, D.C. The university was chartered by an Act of Congress on December 5, 1892 as "The American University", which was approved by President Benjamin Harrison on February 24, 1893...

. She was president of the American Translators Association

American Translators Association

The American Translators Association was founded in 1959 and is now the largest professional association of translators and interpreters in the United States with more than 10,000 members in 90 countries....

 from 1989 to 1991. In 1992, she received the association's highest award, the Alexander Gode

Alexander Gode

Alexander Gottfried Friedrich Gode-von Aesch or simply Alexander Gode was a German-American linguist, translator and the driving force behind the creation of the auxiliary language Interlingua.-Biography:Born to a German father and a Swiss mother, Gode studied at the University of Vienna and the...

 medal. She headed the US delegation to the Statutory Congress of the International Translation Federation in 1990. She was president of the Interlingua

Interlingua

Interlingua is an international auxiliary language , developed between 1937 and 1951 by the International Auxiliary Language Association...

 Institute from 1993 until her death.

Her father was Canadian, and her mother was from the US. After graduating from Washington State University

Washington State University

Washington State University is a public research university based in Pullman, Washington, in the Palouse region of the Pacific Northwest. Founded in 1890, WSU is the state's original and largest land-grant university...

, Hammond received a Master's degree in Linguistics from the University of Ohio and a Doctorate in Spanish Linguistics from Georgetown University

Georgetown University

Georgetown University is a private, Jesuit, research university whose main campus is in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Founded in 1789, it is the oldest Catholic university in the United States...

. She lived in Colombia

Colombia

Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...

 from 1964 to 1967, first as a member of the Peace Corps

Peace Corps

The Peace Corps is an American volunteer program run by the United States Government, as well as a government agency of the same name. The mission of the Peace Corps includes three goals: providing technical assistance, helping people outside the United States to understand US culture, and helping...

 and later as an English instructor at the Industrial University of Santander

Industrial University of Santander

The Industrial University of Santander , also called UIS, is a public, coeducational, research university based primarily in Bucaramanga, Santander, Colombia. It is the largest by student population and the most important higher education institution in the northeast of the country. The...

. She also taught at the superior school in Pullman, Washington

Pullman, Washington

Pullman is the largest city in Whitman County, Washington, United States. The population was 24,675 at the 2000 census and 29,799 according to the 2010 census...

.

She became a volunteer for Senator Henry M. Jackson

Henry M. Jackson

Henry Martin "Scoop" Jackson was a U.S. Congressman and Senator from the state of Washington from 1941 until his death...

 in 1974, and she taught English as a Second Language for Northern Virginia Community College

Northern Virginia Community College

Northern Virginia Community College, often abbreviated NVCC and colloquially as NOVA, comprises several locations in the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., and is both the second largest multi-campus community college in the United States and the largest educational institution in the...

 from 1974 to 1977. She organized conferences for the Association for Machine Translation in the Americas and wrote articles for publications such as the Congressional Record

Congressional Record

The Congressional Record is the official record of the proceedings and debates of the United States Congress. It is published by the United States Government Printing Office, and is issued daily when the United States Congress is in session. Indexes are issued approximately every two weeks...

, the Modern Language Journal, the Annals of Political Science, and the Chronicle of the American Translators Association.

She died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 55. Leland B. Yeager

Leland B. Yeager

Leland B. Yeager is an American economist and an expert on monetary policy and international trade. He graduated from Oberlin College in 1948 with an A.B. and was granted an M.A. from Columbia University in 1949 and a Ph.D. from there in 1952. He had previously served in the United States Army in...

, the Vice President of the Interlingua Institute, assumed her post temporarily until Henry Fischbach was reappointed President in January 1998.