NTEERVIEWER: Thank you for taking part in my interview. I am doing the research on
“Professional interpreters‟ note-taking in consecutive interpreting”. I have some questions for you to help students improve their note-taking skill. First of all, what do you think about the role of note taking in consecutive interpreting?
INTERVIEWEE 2: Note taking in consecutive interpreting, technically, is very important, especially when you have to interpret for speakers who are fond of speaking in long sentences, long speeches, you cannot memorize it all at once. So you have to take note, and then you produce your translation. But if with speakers that tend to speak in a shorter chunk of information, you can remember at once. Note-taking is not that important. But generally, it plays a very important role for consecutive interpreting. It depends on theme, topics as well. And it depend on Memory capacity of interpreter as well because once I have been told that some interpreters can memorize quite well without any kind of note- taking, they can still produce their translation quite fluently because they have good memory. With other interpreter, for example some just memorize 5-10 sentences for a time, so they have to take note. And it depends on the types of information as well. If the speech contains a lot of numbers, figures and proper names, all source of information that you‟ve ready known from lesson relating to note-taking. So you cannot memorize everything so you have to note down the thing that you tend to forget.
INTEERVIEWER: Tend to forget?
INTERVIEWEE 2: Right. Who knows. If suddenly, that is the bad day of your, you cannot remember anything, Health condition not good as usual. Normally, you have good memory, but due to lack of sleep of previous night when you‟re performing your interpretation, you cannot remember as well as usual. So it depends on speakers, types of information, memory capacity of interpreters, right. Yeah, internal and external factors, a lot of things. ut it‟s still very important.
INTERVIEWER: What do you think about knowledge of interpreters about the topic they interpret? Does it also affect the quality of their note-taking?
INTERVIEWEE 2: For sure, the background of interpreters, it can affect every aspect of their jobs not only in note-taking skill but also in their performance generally because you
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can hardly to take notes or remember if you know little about something. For example, with familiar topics, you do not need to take notes as much as strange topics. With strange topic, you have little information about that topic, for example, for me I know little about finance and banking. If I have to interpret for a conference in finance and banking, I would be very stressful and I would pay more attention to new words, tense psychologically very, you tend to take note so many things because it is quite difficult to you to predict information, anticipate information. So you have to take notes a lot to get information, to understand what the speaker wants to say. But for example, you know a lot of information related to education; know about that project, that they are conducting during the conference. So you have already everything in your mind. So you do not have to memorize so much information happening during the conference so you will take less note, but you still produce quite good translation. If you know more, you would take less note.
INTERVIEWER: Students tend to note very much but they cannot translate from or read back their notes. Can you suggest some ways to choose information from what speaker said to note?
INTERVIEWEE 2: Actually the answer is skill. The problem I think students always face when they do their note-taking is that they note everything that they hear from the passage.
And as I told you earlier when you encounter a strange topic, with a lot of new words, you tend to take note the new words so you forget that when you take note, you should take note of the message not the words. But because there is a dilemma of English learners, you are prone to catch new words. When you hear some kinds of new words, strange words we tend to memorize it rather than listen to the whole message. Sometimes, it‟s my situation as well. People or students tend to take note of everything that they hear, new words as well. The result is that they have a piece of paper full of words but those words are sentences. So they cannot make sense. They can‟t understand what kind of message through those separate words. The skill I think is important is that they have to bear in their mind that they take note of the message not the words. They only take note what they cannot remember.
INTERVIEWER: It‟s non-contextualized information.
INTERVIEWEE 2: Non-contextualized information?
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INTERVIEWER: Yeah, it is like numbers, figures, list of things
INTERVIEWEE 2: No, it depends on memory capacity. Normally, most people cannot remember figures and numbers but some people are good at numbers, but they find it difficult to memorize things like terminology or they cannot remember proper. So it depends on different people. What they cannot remember. For example, you can memorize numbers very well, so you do not know numbers. For me, it is very necessary for me to take notes number because I‟m very bad at memorizing numbers. That the key point and it varies among interpreters, students. And sometimes you have to take note of the message, the notes of the interpreter does not contain much words and information. Sometimes, you just find some kinds of bullet of points, some sorts of signs, abbreviations. They just mark down and try to keep track of their memory and the information they‟re listening to.
INTERVIEWER: What is the best time for students to note?
INTERVIEWEE 2: When you start noting, right?
INTERVIEWER: Yeah.
INTERVIEWEE 2: You should not take notes as soon as the speaker starts speaking because they haven‟t formed any kind of meaning or message. When translating you your weaknesses, it comes to the thing that we know that you cannot remember, you take notes and when you find that the speaker starts talking about meaningful things, start to deliver a certain message, you start your note. It is quite abstract and difficult for you to image.
Based on my own experience, I find it difficult to memorize figures and numbers, so for example when the speaker starts talking about the history of his company and he started saying like in 1994, we started our company with some types of partners, for example. I started taking my note “1994” because I know that year - that number would slip out of my brain later. ut then I didn‟t take note “we” and „started our company”, I just note the name of the partner. It will take student‟s time to practice and choose when start. I hope that example will illustrate my point. Start with the thing that you cannot remember and start when you find the message.
INTERVIEWER: Do you think the form of the note affect the quality of the interpreting?
INTERVIEWEE 2: The form?
68 INTERVIEWER: Yes, the layout.
INTERVIEWEE 2: Should it go vertical?
INTERVIEWER: Do you think it affect the quality of notes?
INTERVIEWEE 2: Not much based on my experience. But, the important thing is that you should take only short notes. And Try to make it suit your requirement, suit yourself.
You do not have to anyone‟s rules. You create your rules as long as you‟re comfortable because anyway theory is theory. It‟s a big gap from the theory to practice. You cannot force yourself to note vertically when you‟re under pressure, time pressure and a lot of people looking at you at that time as long as you can understand your message, your notes.
It‟s ok. I myself, when I started my interpreting jobs, I spent quite a lot of notebooks.
Sometimes each section costs me a note-book. I wrote big letters. Sometimes, one sentence cost me 1 or 2 pages because I wrote too big letters and very quick. So I keep turning, turning, turning. It is not good example for anyone to follow. As long as it helped you at that time, it‟s ok, totally ok. So you do not follow anyone.
INTERVIEWER: The last question is about the language of the notes. Some interpreters prefer their mother-tongue language in their notes. Which language do you often you in your notes.
INTERVIEWEE 2: Kind of combination, Vietnamese and English and sometimes Chinese characters as well
INTERVIEWER: The third language, right?
INTERVIEWEE 2: It takes less time to produce my note. What I want to emphasize here is that you don‟t have to force yourself to take notes in the target language because I know that, in some kinds of guide books for interpreters, they encouraged the interpreter to take notes, for example in English if you have to translate from Vietnamese to English. It‟s totally ok for you to take note in just Vietnamese. I mean you can take note in whatever language that you find it is comfortable and helps you understand the massage and memorize the message correctly. As long as you look back your notes, you can understand what you note so far. It just suits yourself.
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INTERVIEWER: Can you give me other tips for students to improve their note-taking skills?
INTERVIEWEE 2: Uhm. I think the important thing, I mean, skills are inter-related. If you want to take notes well, your listening comprehension must be good. If you want to listen well, you have to understand the way the language being spoken. For example, in English, they have word stress, sentence stress. They have intonation and sorts of rhythm, you know many features. You have to understand the mechanism or the way that language is spoken, the way that language works. So you can improve your listening comprehension skill. When you can understand, when you listen well, you will know what kind of message that the speaker want to deliver. Then you take notes. One of most difficulties faces students is their listening comprehension skill. They tend to listen to every word in a sentence. When they fail to do so, they feel like they cannot understand the sentence. Meanwhile, if they know that the sentence has stress, or they pronounce the word correctly, they can get the meaning from the key words. I think that it is not the tips.
It is recommendations and advices that students have to improve their listening skill, listening comprehension, focus more on communicative aspect of the language. So you have to listen to understand, not to do exercises, not to get good marks in examinations.
That‟s the difference between a learner and an interpreter. earners tend to focus more on new words but interpreters tend to focus more on global meaning of the sentence. So you have to learn how to skip new word to understand the whole message. That‟s the difference. It‟s quite difficult for English learners as I told you earlier. When you are an English learner, you want to learn new things. Oh, this structure is very nice; this word is very strange I never heard about it. ut when you‟re an interpreter, you have to understand. You have to forget new things, focus more on general ideas so that you can explain for other people. That the difference. Once students can figure and understand that difference, they will have right strategy to listen to the passage that they have to interpret.
They will know how to take notes correctly.
INTERVIEWER: Thank you very much.
INTERVIEWEE 2: OK. Hope that it will help you somehow.
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Appendix 6: NOTES OF PROFESSIONAL INTERPRETERS
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