An Empirical Study On Student Interpreters’ Note-taking Difficulties In Consecutive Interpreting

The Quality of interpreting, to a large extent, depends on interpreters’ performance in memorization, storage and reproduction of source text. Among the three phases, memorization constitutes the precondition of the other two as the inaccuracy and incompleteness of memorization is very likely to jeopardize the reproduction of source text. However, due to the limited memory capacity, interpreters may find it daunting to bear in mind the source text accurately and completely.Therefore, they have to avail themselves of note-taking for memory relief, making note-taking a central topic in consecutive interpreting research.Looking back at previous studies on note-taking, one can find that a wide range of researches have been devoted to exploring the form and features of note-taking in terms of symbols, abbreviations and language choice. In comparison, studies on note-taking difficulties are scant. It should be noted that some of them are either lacking in viable descriptive framework to account for the underlying causes or unable to present any constructive solutions.Given the great significance of note-taking in consecutive interpreting and limitations in previous studies, this study describes an experiment that aims to find out the prominent note-taking difficulties in consecutive interpreting from Chinese to English and vice versa. In addition, the study expounds on causes of note-taking difficulties prior to presenting suggestions for solutions accordingly. This study consists of 20 post-graduate students from Guangdong University of Foreign Studies,who interpret in both directions(English and Chinese). In an effort to collect data about note-taking difficulties, both quantitative and qualitative methods, coupled with such research tools as stimulated recall, interview and questionnaire, are adopted. The stimulated recall, as a very important research tool to shed light on subjects’ cognitiveprocess in this task, requires that the recording of subjects’ production is played back immediately after the interpreting tasks have been accomplished, so it could serve as stimuli to relive subjects thoughts and feelings during the note-taking process. The results show that the prominent note-taking difficulties of E-C interpretation reside in difficulty in(1) understanding complex sentence structures;(2) memorizing sentences with high information intensity;(3) displaying logic in notes;(4) reading back logic in notes. In contrast, the salient note-taking difficulties of C-E interpretation encompass difficulty in(1) taking down such information as enumeration, the beginning or the last sentence of a paragraph;(2) re-expressing in target language. Those difficulties are primarily attributed to insufficient working memory capacity and multi-tasking capability, which are justified within the descriptive framework of the capacity theory of language comprehension and Gile’s effort model. Apart from that, inadequate note-taking techniques and impoverished language proficiency are also accountable for the collected difficulties. These findings suggest that note-taking teaching and learning should focus on improvement of working memory, multi-taking capability,note-taking techniques and language proficiency.