The Impact of Note-taking Techniques on Quality in English-Vietnamese Consecutive Interpreting: A Qualitative Analysis

Abstract

Note-taking is increasingly becoming a crucial role in consecutive interpreting. Researchers have always seen note-taking as a pivotal factor to aid interpreters in consecutive interpreting. Within the next few years, note-taking is likely to become an important component in consecutive interpreting. Nevertheless, there is little domestic research to explore the impact of note-taking techniques on students’ performance quality in consecutive interpreting. Therefore, the aim of our work was to broaden the impact of note-taking techniques on students’ performance quality in English-Vietnamese consecutive interpreting. This study used a qualitative method to collect data via in-depth interviews. Specifically, 11 English Interpretation and Translation major students were invited to participate in these interviews. Thematic analysis was used to analyze the qualitative data. The findings of this work indicated that students commonly utilized note-taking techniques such as abbreviation, noting the ideas rather than the words, symbols and verticality. Furthermore, students perceived both the benefits and drawbacks of note-taking techniques in their consecutive interpreting performance from English to Vietnamese. Note-taking techniques have many advantages in consecutive interpreting, including memory burden reduction, concentration and organization increase, missing important details prevention, confidence and accuracy increase, time-saving, stress and pressure reduction, listening comprehension improvement. Besides, some drawbacks of note-taking were found out such as note-reading and note-understanding difficulty, unsystematic and messy notes, over-reliance on notes, listening and attention distraction and difficulty with new or specialized vocabulary and concepts.