The process and product of note-taking and consecutive interpreting: empirical data from professionals and students

ABSTRACT

Consecutive interpreting (CI) plays a crucial role in interpreting practice and education. To gain a better understanding of the skills and competencies needed on the path to consecutive expertise, this study collects empirical data from 22 professional interpreters and 22 students in terms of both the process and product of note-taking and CI in two interpreting directions. Important differences are found between the two groups. During note-taking, the professional group showed such features as higher writing speed, shorter time lag, larger note size, and lower note density than the students. The data also revealed different patterns in their use of symbols and choice of language. As for interpreting quality, the largest difference was found in information completeness, followed by fluency of delivery. Moreover, directionality was found to play an important role in interacting with the differences. Findings of this study point to some areas requiring special attention in CI training.

KEYWORDS:

• Note-taking
• consecutive interpreting
• process
• professionals
• students

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 The part of research with professional interpreters was conducted in Australia and approved by Macquarie University Ethics Committee (5201400628) and the part with students was conducted in China and approved by the Ethics Committee of the College of International Studies at Southwest University (SWUCIS20CYY005).

2 For further information, refer to the website of the software at https://eyeandpen.net/en/page-daccueil-en/.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by China National Social Sciences Foundation: [Grant Number 20CYY005].

Notes on contributors

Sijia Chen

Sijia Chen main research interests include cognitive translation and interpreting (T&I) studies, T&I technology, and audiovisual translation. She investigates the cognitive processing and cognitive load in translation and interpreting using pen recording, eye tracking, think-aloud protocols, and psychometrics. Her current project focuses on computer-assisted interpreting (CAI) featuring speech recognition and machine translation.