The Effect Of High-speed Speech On Note-taking Of Consecutive Interpreting

On September 13,2017,the Nanning International Sister City Exchange Conference was held in Nanning.International participants discussed a broad range of topics including innovation,the sharing economy,education,technology,and medical care to promote economic growth and stimulate economic vitality,as well as strengthen cooperation between sister cities.This conference’s source audio was chosen by the author for use in the simulation of English to Chinese interpretation.The rapid pace of the speakers’ speeches is a challenge to the note-taking process of the practice,and the fidelity of the interpretation will be compromised if the note-taking method is not adjusted in time.In this report,the Effort Model of Daniel Gile is combined with the case study of the source language,the target language,and pictures of notes in order to analyze the challenges and to propose possible solutions.The author found that with high-speed speech,the interpreter tended to focus more energy on notes and was unable to adjust the "speed comfort zone" in time,which resulted in an imbalanced distribution of effort and decreased interpretation fidelity.Problems with interpreter’s notes generally occur in two fields: analysis and comprehension as well as note-taking.Accordingly,the interpreter tended to disregard logical markers in listening and note-taking,failed to divide clusters of meanings clearly through note structures,and failed to simplify and integrate note symbols appropriately.The author proposes the following strategies in order to address the above issues.At the analyzing and comprehension stage,try listening to speeches at different speeds to stretch the comfort zone;focus on identifying and recording logical markers and simplifying the recording of information in the source language;pay attention to the speaker’s voice tone.At the note-taking strategy stage,incorporate symbols,use acronyms and logical markers as an alternative to sentence recording;use note-taking techniques such as vertical writing,indentation,and overlap to separate clusters of meaning,etc.High-speed speech represents an uncontrollable aspect of interpretation practice.This report is intended to serve as a source of reference and inspiration to interpreters seeking to achieve better proficiency in dealing with high-speed speech environments.