Note-taking Traits and Interpreting Efficiency in Consecutive Interpreting

Abstract

This article is going to explore the correlation between the efficiency of note-taking and interpreting ability by comparing different traits of consecutive interpreting notes. The author conducted a small-scaled empirical research by asking two professional students from interpreting major and two untrained students from other majors as samples, with a view to testing their interpreting ability. By comparing the note-taking numbers, forms, and language sources, the correlation between note-taking efficiency and note trait of interpreting can be illustrated by statistics. The result shows that the trained group wrote more words than the untrained group; they also used more abbreviations, symbols, numbers, Chinese, and logical connection words than the other two untrained students. However, they write down less complete words. Due to the significant difference between the results of the two groups, the efficiency of note-taking, a skill that can be improved by practicing, is closely related to note-taking. However, it is not a cause-and-effect relationship.