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Part of
Translation in Transition: Human and machine intelligence
Edited by Isabel Lacruz
[American Translators Association Scholarly Monograph Series XX] 2023
► pp. 157–182

Chapter 8
Economy and efficiency of note-taking in consecutive interpreting from English to Chinese

A study on Ear-Pen Span, Note-Taking Duration, Units, and Quality

| Hong Kong Baptist University
| Hong Kong Baptist University
| Kent State University

Note-taking serves an important memory-supporting role in consecutive interpreting. It greatly facilitates the reproduction of the same message in another language. Previous research mainly focused on note-taking and interpreting performance but studies failed to reach consensus on whether and how choice of form and language in note-taking influences interpreting performance. This was possibly due to lack of consistency in annotation of the notes and the fact that note-taking itself diverts interpreters’ attention from listening to the source language and analyzing the message. We take a different perspective on note-taking, exploring economy and efficiency and using empirical data to examine their interrelationship. We also propose a novel classification and annotation schema, which can be used in future large-scale investigations.

Keywords: note-taking, Ear-Pen Span (EPS), Note-Taking Duration (NTD), Note-Taking Unit (NTU), NTQ (NTQ), annotation schema
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Researching note-taking in interpreting studies
    • 2.1Previous research on note-taking
    • 2.2Note-taking research with digital technology
  • 3.The study
    • 3.1Research questions
    • 3.2Participants
    • 3.3Materials, equipment, and software
      • 3.3.1The source speech audio file
      • 3.3.2Equipment
      • 3.3.3Software
    • 3.4Data collection and analysis
      • 3.4.1The experimental setting
      • 3.4.2Steps of the experiment
    • 3.5Categorization of the Note-Taking Units (NTUs)
    • 3.6Ear-Pen Span (EPS)
    • 3.7Note-Taking Duration (NTD)
    • 3.8Note-Taking Quality (NTQ)
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1EPS and NTD
    • 4.2EPS, NTD, and NTU category
    • 4.3NTU category and NTQ
    • 4.4EPS, NTD, and NTQ
  • 5.Discussion and conclusions
    • 5.1EPS and NTD
    • 5.2EPS, NTD, and NTU category
    • 5.3NTU category and NTQ
    • 5.4EPS, NTD, and NTQ
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
Published online: 26 July 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ata.xx.08xu
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