An Initial Exploration Of The Relationship Between Note-taking And The Fluency In Consecutive Interpretation: A Case Study

As consecutive interpretation (CI) is a communicative act, its quality is, to a large extent,dependent on the fluency of re-expression, which is also a criterion for measuring theinterpreter's performance. Meanwhile, in CI the interpreter relies on not only STM but alsonotes to re-express the original. Then, is there a relationship between the fluency of re-expression and note-taking? If so, how does note-taking affect the fluency? What are the note-taking-related factors that are affecting the fluency? Based on previous related studies, thisthesis provides a qualitative study on the relationship between note-taking and the fluency in re-expression in CI.This paper first explains CI as a communicative act, its process and its quality standards. Then,it employs related theories to illustrate note-taking's role in CI and its process, definition offluency and disfluency and note-taking-related factors that affect fluency in CI. This is followedwith the illustration of Daniel Gile's Effort Model, which is the theoretical base for this paper.In order to support the hypothesis, an experiment is carried out. The subjects are 11 Englishmajor postgraduates who have acquired basic CI skills. The experiment includes an on-the-spotEnglish to Chinese consecutive interpreting, and after-experiment questionnaire survey. Thisstudy is mainly based on qualitative analysis. The conclusion is as follows:Fluency in re-expression of CI is related to note-taking. Disfluency is often caused byinterpreter's lacking a readily available set of note-taking system and improper allocation ofattention. Thus, it is advisable for the student-interpreters to make greater effort in improvingthe two aspects in CI training.