How Effective is Teaching Note-Taking to Trainee Interpreters?

This paper examines the effectiveness of teaching note-taking to trainee interpreters. It first identifies layout, symbols and visualizations as aspects assumed to contribute to more successful consecutive interpreting and then presents contents of a note-taking course. The experimental study described in the paper features interpreting trainees who had previously completed this course as participants. The students were asked to interpret a text into their B language consecutively, submit their notes to the conductor of the experiment and complete a questionnaire. The analysis focuses on certain elements of the source text (concepts to be noted down as symbols, figures, easy to visualize excerpts, etc.) as reflected in the notes and in the questionnaire. The results show that the majority of students focus on correctly writing down numbers, apply visualizations as mnemonics and adhere to well-structured layout principles. However, such elements as symbols are not readily transferable to the students' individual note-taking systems.