An Experimental Report On The Misleading Effects Of Note-taking In Chinese-english Consecutive Interpreting

To complete the high-quality consecutive interpreting task, interpreters in generalneed the help of note-taking. Note-taking can assist interpreters in memorizing,processing and reorganizing the source language. Interpreters are often required tointerpret the source language after the speaker has finished a paragraph. They need toremember a lot of information, and thus sometimes they have to rely on theirnote-taking. For the less experienced interpreters, note-taking would be a burden forthem and it may mislead the interpreters in consecutive interpreting. Consequently, itwill affect the quality of interpretation.This thesis analyzes the misleading effects of note-taking in Chinese-Englishconsecutive interpreting of the text “2014New Year Greetings from President XiJinping (Excerpts)”. According to the comparative study and by means of using SPSSsoftware for data analysis, this thesis summarizes the misleading effects of notes inthe following aspects: logical confusion caused by the lack of logic in note-taking,information mismatch caused by incomplete system of note-taking, grammaticalerrors caused by the notes taken in source language, overused of time in reorganizinginformation caused by messy notes. Based on the results of experiment, the study putsforward two strategies to improve the skills of note-taking:“DIY” notes and “CentralPrinciple”.This thesis aims at making the MTI learners have deeper understanding ofnote-taking to avoid its misleading effects. It aims at improving the ability of MTIlearners in taking notes and thus to improve the quality of consecutive interpreting.This study will provide some reference to other interpreting activities.