The Choice of Language for Note-taking for the Purposes of Consecutive Interpreting

The subject of the article is the choice of language that is used for notetaking for consecutive interpreting. The paper is based on a small-scale empirical case study analysis of note-taking by interpreting students. The analysis was aimed at determining which language – source language (SL) or target language (TL) – was preferred by students, who were given freedom of choice regarding the selection of language that they would use for the preparation of notes to help with consecutive interpreting tasks. The study group consisted of three cohorts of translation and interpreting students who were at the end of their first semester of work with consecutive. The students were asked to prepare notes for a regular consecutive task, from English into Polish; Polish was the mother tongue for all of the students. The outcomes of the analysis may show what might be the “natural” choice of language for notation and may provide suggestions about improving the system of teaching notation in the case of novice interpreters.

Cognitive and Neurolinguistic Aspects of Interpreting

Over the past decade, a large and growing body of literature has explored the cognitive and neural foundations of interpreting processes. The article explores the relevance of cognitive and neurolinguistic approaches to the process of both simultaneous and consecutive interpreting. The main objective is to reveal the interpreter’s status, his/her mental and linguistic operations as cognitive units in the approaches under review. Firstly, we discuss how both interpreting modes have been understood and defined by various researchers. Secondly, we present the overview of diverse research works on cognitive and neurolinguistic scientific approaches to interpretation, trying to understand and explain the operating of interpreters’ minds. Finally, we focus on the issues of bilingualism and its impact on language comprehension and its production. It has been revealed that interpreting contributes significantly to improving cognitive and neural functions of the brain. Interpreters have always been a key figure in facilitating and bridging communication across cultures and languages. They can input, retain, retrieve, and output data but are limited in processing capacity at any given time. Quite recently, scholars in both interpreting and neurolinguistics have attempted to provide insight into the organization of bilingual speakers’ minds. In interpreting and translation tasks, it has been complemented by research works into language control in a bilingual language mode, with both language systems being simultaneously activated. Taken together, the cognitive and neurolinguistic studies reviewed in the paper support strong recommendations to regard an interpreter as a conceptual mediator relying on both his/her decision-making and probability thinking mechanisms.

THE SYSTEM OF EXERCISES FOR TEACHING ORAL CONSECUTIVE INTERPRETING

The aim of our study was to create a system of exercises for teaching interpretation in the language pair "German-Ukrainian", due to the emergence of new standards for the quality of professional training of interpreters. In our article we used theoretical and empirical research methods: critical analysis of scientific literature on translation studies, methods of professional training of translators; educational documents and textbooks in higher education institutions; monitoring the organization of interpretation training in higher education institutions; observation of the organization of interpretation training in the Free Economic Zone; survey of translation teachers in order to study the state of professional training of applicants for higher education; questionnaires, self-assessment of future translators in order to identify the probable level of their professional competence. At the initial stage of the study, a survey of both higher education and translation teachers was conducted in order to identify priority areas of professional interpretation of an interpreter, to select relevant material and develop a system of exercises to develop skills and skills of interpretation within the discipline "Fundamentals of Interpreting", which is taught in the 3rd year (180 hours, 6 credits). The subject component of the content of interpretation training is limited on the basis of the results of the questionnaire in the following areas: social, political, as well as the field of culture and education. According to the stages of interpretation training, a system of exercises consisting of three subsystems has been developed. These include exercises for: 1) the formation of special skills of interpretation; 2) automation of skills and formation of special and strategic skills; 3) development of special and strategic skills. The material for the development of these exercises was authentic German-language online sources in the field of culture and education, as well as social and political spheres of human activity (official websites of Deutsche Welle, the European Commission, the website of the Federal Chancellor and the President of Germany; private podcast Annik Rubens Slow German mit Annik Rubens, printed publications in online format: Bild, Zeit, Spiegel, die Welt, Frankfurter Allgemeine, as well as online terminological dictionaries. The total amount of practical tasks for translation and exercises for the formation and automation of special skills of interpretation and development of strategic skills is 200 units, which are offered as a basis for the conclusion of methodological development for teaching interpretation in the 3rd year. Key words: consecutive interpreting, professional competence of an interpreter, system of exercises, stages of training, groups of exercises.

The effects of topic familiarity on information completeness, fluency, and target language quality of student interpreters in Chinese–English consecutive interpreting

This study investigated the effects of topic familiarity on interpreting quality of eighteen Master of Translation and Interpreting (MTI) student interpreters in Chinese–English consecutive interpreting (CI) at a university in China. Data were collected from two interpreting tasks in a 2-hour interpreting course over a four-week period. The interpreting quality was assessed by using three analytic rating scales (i.e., information completeness, fluency of delivery, and target language quality) and a holistic rating. Semi-structured interviews with the students were conducted to gain some in-depth perceptions of the effects of topic familiarity on interpreting quality. The results showed that topic familiarity had significant effects on information completeness, fluency of delivery, target language quality, and holistic scores of the interpreting tasks. It was also found that topic familiarity strongly correlated with information completeness, fluency of delivery, target language quality, and holistic scores. The findings of the study indicate that topic familiarity should be included and highlighted in Chinese–English consecutive interpreting in classroom contexts. The study provides effective guidance for interpreting teaching, training, and research.

Note-taking in consecutive interpreting. On the reconstruction of an individualised language

To facilitate the process of consecutive interpreting, professional interpreters typically use a special system of note-taking. In the approaches developed on the basis of practical interpreting experience, these notations are commonly regarded as a note-taking technique, and in relevant specialist literature they are often conceived as a language-independent instrument. Against the background of a cognitive approach, however, it can be shown that the so¬called note-taking TECHNIQUE can adequately be described by means of the theoretical constructs LANGUAGE and DISCOURSE. The language dimension is explored with regard to word meanings, word formation and inflection, semantic relations at sentence and text level as well as pragmatic functions. The discourse dimension is mainly discussed from the perspective of rele¬vance theory with a particular emphasis on the balance between the explicit and the implicit.

Self-assessment of Consecutive Interpreting by MTI Interpreting Students

Assessing the quality of interpreting practice and conducting targeted training is the key to improving interpreting ability of MTI student interpreters. By reviewing literature on interpreting assessment and self-assessment, the research has decided the parameters for self-assessment of consecutive interpreting practice, developed a self-assessment form and conducted self-assessment of MTI interpreting students for fifteen weeks. Research results show that students have developed awareness of autonomous quality monitoring and improved their overall interpreting ability.

The Emergence of a Complex Language Skill: Evidence from the Self-organization of Interpreting Competence in Interpreting Students

Research on the development of interpreting competence could be a window to the issue of how L2 learners develop complex language skills. The present study conducted a longitudinal experiment with beginning interpreting students, exploring the change of relationship between consecutive interpreting (CI) competence and two related capacities (i.e., language competence and memory capacity). Two major results were revealed. First, in general, more language skills and working memory (WM) spans got correlated with CI performance at the later stage of CI training. Second, a fit structural equation model of CI competence could only be reported in the post-test. We may therefore conclude that the development of interpreting competence is at least partly a result of the self-organization of the interpreting competence system, in which relevant components get mobilized, and a better coordinated structure emerges. Implications for the development of complex language skills and for the concept of self-organization are discussed.