The Difference In Note-taking Features Between High-level And Low-level Consecutive Interpreters

Note-taking is an essential skill for consecutive interpreters. It can complement the interpreter's working memory and can help in understanding original texts. Most previous studies indicate that note-taking in interpreting has a role to play in the quality of oral translation. In the literature, note-taking has been examined from such aspects as the quantity, the form and the language in note-taking. Among them, the form of note-taking includes the complete Chinese characters and English words and phrases, single Chinese characters, abbreviations, symbols and linking symbols. There have been many researches about the relationship between note-taking features and consecutive interpreting performance. Though they have got some findings about the nature of this relationship, little is known about the difference in note-taking between high-level interpreters and low-level interpreters. The present research is going to find about the difference between interpreters in their note-taking features and explore the reasons for these differences. Specifically, this paper intended to explore the three research questions:(1) What's the difference between high-level interpreters and low-level interpreters in note-taking features in Chinese-English interpretation?(2) What are the reasons for these differences?(3) What are the pedagogical implications of these differences?This study took as the subjects students majored in MTI from a university in Fuzhou, Fujian Province. First, the researcher gave a test of consecutive interpreting to the subjects, in which they could take notes. And the test was tape recorded. Second, the performance was graded, and ten high-level and ten low-level interpreters were picked out to form two groups for further investigation. Third, the notes of the two groups were thoroughly examined and compared to find their differences and similarities. Fourth, some members of the two groups were interviewed for reasons behind the differences.The main findings of this study are as follows.(1)Low-level interpreters did more note-taking than high-level interpreters. The reason seemed to be that the low-level interpreters did not know how to take notes, and they did not get the point of note-taking. (2) In terms of the form of note-taking, high-level interpreters used more single Chinese characters, abbreviation, and link symbols than low-scored interpreters; by contrast, low-level interpreters used more complete words and phrases. The reasons seemed to be that high-level interpreters have consciousness on processing and clearing up the source of language and have logical way of thinking. (3) High-level interpreters used less source language and more target language than the low-level interpreters. It seemed that the high-level interpreters were in favor of choosing target language to avoid the dilemma of using two languages when thinking and taking notes.The significance of these results was discussed.