The Relationship Between Source Text Difficulty And Language Choice For Note-taking In Consecutive Interpreting

The interpreter's "black box"(Pochhacker,2015)has always been a focus of interest for researchers in cognitive science.For consecutive interpreting(CI),some researchers(e.g.,???,2008;??&??,2014)try to explore the working mechanisms of human brain through studying CI notes,including the forms,contents,layout as well as language(s)used.Numerous studies have investigated language choice for note-taking,among which two perspectives of language categorization stand out:one is the dichotomy of source language(SL)and target language(TL),with regard to the role in interpreting;the other is the division of the first language(L1)and the second language(L2),with regard to the status in the interpreter's language combination.While interpreting consecutively between Chinese and English,interpreters generally show a tendency of taking notes in SL,especially novice interpreters(e.g.,???&???,2007;????,2010).This is explained by a heavier cognitive load for the processing of the SL information,which makes it harder for language switch during note-taking.Following this rationale,it can be speculated that increasing difficulty of the source text would put greater pressure on the interpreter,resulting in a greater proportion of SL notes.However,from a psycholinguistic perspective,language switch takes place through constant language selection and de-selection.When two languages are both available,it is easier to inhibit the less proficient language(L2)than the more proficient,native language(L1),and L1 is linked closer to concepts than L2.If it is easier to process the source information in L1,it is more likely that notes tend to be taken in L1.This study seeks to answer the following questions:does source text difficulty affect the choice of language for CI notes?If so,as difficulty increases,is there a tendency in language choice for note-taking in Chinese-English CI and English-Chinese CI respectively?In order to find the answers to those questions,a comparative experiment is designed in an attempt to explore the relationship between source text difficulty and language choice for CI notes.30 first-year graduate students of the English MTI program of a Chinese university participate in the study.They are firstly required to take a listening comprehension test,and then,according to their scores,26 of them are selected and divided into two groups,the mean scores of the listening test being equal.Each group is given two interpreting tasks,one from Chinese to English and the other from English to Chinese.The difficulty levels of passages given to the two groups are different-while Group A do the simpler passages,the passages for Group B are more difficult.They are required to take notes while listening and,after interpreting each segment,they are asked to explain their notes and reflect what they are thinking during note-taking.The whole process is recorded,and all the notes are then collected and analyzed.Four categories of notes are defined:Chinese,English,symbols and others.The proportion of each category in each interpreter's notes is calculated.The results indicate that source text difficulty does affect the language choice for note-taking;however,the impacts are different in the two directions of interpreting.In Chinese-English tasks,an increase in source text difficulty is associated with a greater percentage of Chinese notes,while in the case of English-Chinese interpreting,the proportion of notes in either language does not seem to differ statistically in the two tasks.The author then discusses the findings in terms of the two languages' status in the interpreting tasks(as the source or target language)and their roles in the interpreter's language combination(as their L1 or L2).Suggestions for interpreting training are also put forward.