To answer this question, the researcher conducted semi-interviews with two professional interpreters who gave practical suggestions for interpreting students.
4.4.1 Relation of note-taking, active listening and short-term memory capacity
Both interviewees shared the opinion that, in practice, note-taking was not the most important skill for consecutive interpreting. According to interpreter 1, it was only a part used to keep information that cannot be stored by short-term memory.
The most important element to make a successful translation in consecutive interpreting, for her, was “the combination of active listening and good short-term
35
memory”. Interpreters, regarding as active listeners, had to listen actively and attentively and tried to anticipate what the speaker was going to say. In addition, with the support of excellent short-term memory, most of information was analyzed and stored in brain without jotting many words. In this case, note-taking only served the role of a good helper for comprehension. According to interpreter 2, note-taking strategies of interpreter were affected by a variety of factors such as memory capacity, the length of information in the source language, knowledge about the topic of the speech. Regarding to memory capacity, she had the same idea with the interpreter 1 in that some interpreters could produce their translation very fluently without little support of notes because they had good memory. Moreover, note-taking also depended on the length of information. For example, if speakers tended to speak in long sentences, students should note down to ensure the sufficiency of information. She also stressed that knowledge about the topic of speech also influenced the way to take notes. It was obvious that with familiar topics, students did not need to note as much as with strange topics. In her opinion, when dealing with strange or new topics, students would pay more attention to new terms and forget to listen to the whole message. Furthermore, when lacking information about a topic, it was relatively difficult to anticipate information.
Therefore, preparing detailed knowledge of the subject matter and the related terminology is necessary for successful comprehension.
4.4.2 Individuality in the choice of note-taking form and contents
Both of interpreters believed that note-taking is highly personal. Therefore, they suggested that students should be free to choose what to note and how to note as
36
long as the notes helped them to interpret effectively. It was not necessary for notes to contain all main ideas, the links and non-contextualized information. However, there were common rules students should bear in mind. The first rule was skipping individual words and concentrating on the meaning of the passage as a whole. A very common problem faced by students was that they take copious notes and believed that they would ensure an accurate and complete interpreting. However, this strategy usually worked in the opposite way. Students gave their whole mind to taking down words rather than listening for the message. They advised students to listen for the meaning first and then jot down words, abbreviations or symbols which can convey that meaning at the time of interpreting. By doing this, students can do their translation correctly even when there were some new words or phrases.
However, it required a good analytical skills which helped them select types of information they should listen to. The second rule was that students should note down things they “tend to forget”. Such kind of information should not be identified with non-contextualized information because of differences in memory capacity. For instance, one that was excellent at memorizing numerical data but found things like technical terms or proper names quite hard to remember. Taking the case of interpreting 2 as an illustration, she said that it was difficult to her to memorize numbers and figures. Therefore, with the sentence, for example, “In 1990, we established trade relations with 24 countries”, she wrote down “1990” and
“24” and ignored other words.
37 4.4.3 Time to note
When realizing their short-term memory capacity and listening actively, students can determine the time when they start to note since time to note was also an important factor. According to interpreter 1, students should note down after the speaker finish complete idea. At that moment, students can understand information and use their short-term memory to retain a part of information. They just jotted down the things that they found not easy to remember. Having the same way of thinking, interpreter 2 suggested students should not take notes as soon as the speaker start speaking because they would not form any kind of message.
4.4.4 Language to note
Two interpreters also offered some valuable suggestions concerning using language of notes. In their point of view, students can use both the source language and the target language in their notes to take notes. Many expressions or phrases can be noted easily and briefly in source language than the target language.
Interpreter 1 stated two examples to prove her point. The Vietnamese phrase “ ộ ao động Thương binh và Xã hội” could be a quite long to take down. She suggested using an abbreviation in English as O IS . For the phrase “non- performing loans”, using its equivalence in Vietnamese “nợ xấu” was much shorter and more convenient. They believed that students should note what come to their mind first. It was common to find notes that were noted down in a combination of the source language and the target language or even the third language. Language of notes was not the case in point providing that they understood their notes.
38 4.4.5 Preparation skills
When doing this study, the researcher also received some useful advice from a dedicated lecturer from the University of Languages and International Studies. In her point of view, preparation was also an important skill that students should acquire. It consists of getting papers, notebooks or pens ready. From her own experience, notes should be written in spiral-bound notebooks with the size of A4, A5 or A6. Each page was devided into two parts vertically. Besides, pencils shoud be sharpened both two ends. Such kind of advice seemed to be easy to follow, but it might be a disaster if interpreters, expecially students did not make careful arrangements in advance.
To conclude, the above suggestions are very helpful for interpreting students in consecutive interpreting training. It is necessary for them to apply note-taking skills and techniques which in turn help them formulate comprehensive strategies to do high quality translations in the future. Keeping practicing is of utmost importance because only practice makes perfect.
39