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
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.
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
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Acknowledgements
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Notes
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References
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Appendix