Note-Taking Skills In Consecutive Interpreting

With the development of globalization,consecutive interpretation has played an important role in international communication.It is a complex and challenging job,requiring different professional skills,among which note-taking skill is necessary for all interpreters.Due to the limitation of people’s memory capacity,notes can ensure interpreters a strong memory,so they play an irreplaceable role in interpreting practice.What to remember,and how to remember mainly depends on how the brain processes the information while listening to a speech.The basis that the brain processes information is firmly connected with the characteristics of this information.Only in this way that the hand and brain cooperate with each other,high-quality interpreting can be achieved.This thesis takes three lectures on “Global Climate Change” as the speeches to be interpreted for practice.They are the lectures by professor Mark Maslin in the program of “Talks at Google” entitled Climate Change at Talks at Google;Dr.Jim White’s lecture named Global Climate Chang in the program “Understanding Climate Change”;Professor Veerabhadran Ramanathans lecture at Stockholm University,titled Bending the Curve: Climate Change Solutions.They conduct in-depth studies on the causes,trends,impacts on human’s activities and strategies to improve global climate change,aiming to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,reduce climate change risks and address climate change challenges.Taking this as the material for simulated consecutive interpreting,this thesis aims to study how to jot down notes and improve interpreting efficiency when the source language is information-intensive.As a result,three lectures on global climate change are used as interpreting materials to study how to take notes when source language information is quite intensive.Based on Gile’s “Cognitive Load Model” and “Comprehension Equation”,this thesis studies how to improve interpreting notes.First of all,the author collects the factors affecting cognitive load and classifies them into two categories: heavy cognitive load factors and light cognitive load factors.When dealing with heavy cognitive load factors,interpreters are assumed to focus on steps of listening and analysis and in the note-reading.When taking notes,they are expected to keep a complete record of numbers,terms or proper names.In addition,if terms or proper nouns are those unprepared before,interpreters can focus on their semantic meanings and interpret the main idea of the words.When it comes to light cognitive load factors,the pressure on listening and analysis and note-taking is not much.Therefore,interpreters can devote their efforts to short-term memory and production.In that case,notes can be totally simplified,only recording the logical conjunction or the main prompt words.What’s more,under the guidance of Gile’s Comprehension Equation,interpreters should utilize their extra-linguistic knowledge so as to gain a full understanding of the speaker’s intention and ensure the audience the same effect as the target language audience.To achieve that goal,interpreters can try to reformulate the sentence structure or word order,extract key information,remove redundant information and make appropriate supplement and so on.