On How To Help Students Take Concise Notes In Consecutive Interpretation Training

In consecutive interpretation training programs, most students think that the more notes they take, the more complete their interpretation can be. Students usually don't accept the idea of taking concise notes. The outcome is that interpreting quality goes up slowly despite much practice. To address this problem, more contents should be added to the current training approach which focuses on practice so that students can come to deeply realize the importance of concise note-taking.This thesis aims to prove students'preconceived notion on note-taking is incorrect. The thesis first analyzes the effort model put forward by Gile. Gile divides consecutive interpreting into two phases. In phase one, Interpretation = L(Listening and Analysis) + N(Note-taking) + M(Short-term Memory operations) + C(Coordination). In phase two, Interpretation = Remembering + Note-reading + Production. Analysis of phase one of the model shows that without compromising the quality of notes, less note-taking can free up energy for the interpreter to focus more on listening, analysis and short-term memory. The thesis goes on to discuss the triangle model by Selekovitch. This model explains from another perspective why conciseness matters. Examining this model shows that meticulous note-taking hampers the interpreter's efforts to grasp the sense of the speech and thus forces the interpreter to do transcoding and makes interpreting unnatural. The views of Liu Minhua and Jones are also analyzed and the conclusion is that too much note-taking leads to transliteration and makes interpreters unable to see the big picture.The thesis also discusses why students don't manage to take concise notes from the perspective of note-taking skills. The skills developed by Herbert, Rozan and van Hoof are effective, but not tailored to the needs of Chinese interpreters. If Chinese characters can be introduced into note-taking, it will take less time for student to grasp note-taking skills.The last part of the thesis is about an experiment. The result proves the views of Gile, Seleskovitch, Liu Minhua and Jones by showing that concise note-taking contributes to higher interpreting quality.