CONSECUTIVE INTERPRETING
A. Concept of consecutive interpreting
Consecutive interpreting is a type of interpreting in which interpreter waits for the
speaker to make a pause in their speech, interpret what has been said and then listen to the
speaker and wait for them to make a pause again to interpret. The frequency of pauses varies
greatly but pauses are usually made after completing a few sentences. If the speaker is talking for
a longer period of time, interpreter usually makes notes in order to render an accurate translation.
Consecutive interpreting is when the interpreter listens to the source-language speaker
and after a sentence or a part of the speech reproduces the speech in the target language for the
audience. Typically, in consecutive interpreting during a speech the translator stands next to the
caller. When the speaker finishes a speech, or has a break in their speech, the interpreter
reproduces the statement in the target language as a whole and in such manner as if they
delivered it.
B. Strategies/Skills Required
1. Listening
To be able to process the SL message accurately, the interpreter must be able to listen
effectively and attend to meaning. The term “attending” is often used to describe the type of
listening that interpreters engage in. The difference is that hearing is a passive process involving
an involuntary reaction of the senses and the nervous system, while listening is a voluntary,
conscious effort to process the input selectively. Attending is the most alert, deliberate form of
listening. It is no coincidence that we use the expression “to pay attention” in English. When we
pay attention, we are giving awareness, interest, and effort in order to receive information (or
comfort or entertainment, depending on the setting). Active listening is hard work, which is why
we do not give our attention indiscriminately.
Research on listening comprehension reveals that three related levels of discourse
processing are involved in listening: (1) propositional identification that is, identifying units of
meaning in the message, (2) interpretation of ifiocutionary force determining the speaker’s
intention, and (3) activation of real world knowledge calling up the appropriate scripts or
schemas (Richards, 1983).
2. Prediction
prediction is a natural element of human communication, it poses obvious dangers to the
accurate processing of messages. The individual’s decision, whether conscious or unconscious,
about what the message really was is affected by that person’s own biases, expectations, and
knowledge, and distortion can easily result. Court interpreters should be particularly aware of
this phenomenon andjriake sure they interpret what they actually heard, not what they expected
to hear.
3. Memory
One of the most ef fective ways to improve retention and retrieval is to organize the
incoming information to make it more manageable. Assuming that memory is unlimited, the
problem the interpreter faces is not storage capacity, but retrieval. Because so much data are
stored in memory, it may take longer to find a given item. Memory is like a cross-referenced
index card ifie: The more ways one has to index items or the more associations one has with
items, the more easily they are retrieved. Or, looking at it from a different perspective, the more
pathways that lead to an item, the more likely the individual will be able to take one and find
what she is looking for. This is why it is so important for interpreters to analyze a message as
they hear it and to organize it into meaningful units (forming associations or pathways
connecting things that are already stored in memory), rather than focusing on individual words.
4. Notetaking
Perhaps the most common memory aid that people use in every aspect of life is
notetaking. They jot down phone numbers, grocery lists, reminders about things to do, and other
tasks. Professionals in all fields use specialized notes to help them perform a variety of tasks, and
interpreters are no exception. The notetaking system that has been devised by conference
interpreters is discussed later on in this section.
The object of notes is to supplement memory efficiency, and individuals normally take
notes with either or both of two aims in mind:
a. Notes can be perceived as an external storage mechanism where the interpreter uses
notes as a means of reproducing and storing knowledge for later consultation;
b. Notes can also be examined via the note-taking process itself, where it is seen as
an encoding mechanism that facilitates retention in that taking notes may con
tribute to the learner’s acquisition of knowledge, in other words, his “learning’
in a relatively direct manner.
The following techniques are used in the Rozan (1956) method to abstract ideas from
the Source Language message:
a. Placement of ideas on the page: indentation, verticalization.
b. Abbreviation: common abbreviations such as “atty’ “info:’ “OK”; abbreviations
from science (H20, Au); shorthand notations; and others.
c. Symbols: mathematical and scientific symbols, Greek letters, arrows, punctua
tion marks, lines of negation, individualized symbols.
d. Lines: negation, relationship, repetition, numbers, circles, underlining for emphasis.
The following general principles, based on the applicable features of the Rozan (1956)
method and the specific demands of the judicial setting, can serve as a guide for notetaldng
by the court interpreter:
a. Take only the notes you need. The majority of the questions and answers in typical
witness testimony are short, and the interpreter may not need to take notes at all. If a
short answer contains an address, interpreters may write down just an abbreviation of the
address and nothing more. As interpreters gain experience, they wifi be able to gauge
their memory capacity and will know how many notes they need to take, if any. Once
interpreters decide to take notes, they should choose what to write judiciously, writing
only words or symbols that will help them to remember the message.
b. Abbreviate, writing only what is meaningful to you. Abbreviations are very personalized
and are based on the interpreter’s own experience. If the interpreter has an extensive
medical background, for example, “stat” may be used to mean “immediately, right away,
quickly’ whereas another interpreter would have to write more. If”def” is what the
interpreter always uses to signify the defendant, those three letters are sufficient, but if
the interpreter does not often use that abbreviation and fears she might confuse it with
“definite” or “defer” or another similar word, the interpreter needs to use more letters of
the word (e.g., “dfndt”). It is risky to invent ad hoc abbreviations or symbols that will
mean nothing five minutes after they are written. The selection of sym bols and
abbreviations must be rigorously practiced. Once the interpreter has made a judicious
choice of what to write down, abbreviation should be used as much as possible.
c. Use pictures, diagrams, and relative position on the page. Some testimony lends itself to a
graphic depiction, while other testimony may be more word-oriented. If the witness gives
an answer that can be easily visualized, the interpreter may choose to draw a picture
rather than noting down words.
5. Situational Control
The rigorous accuracy requirements of interpreted testimony limit the interpreter’s ca
pacity to retain all of the content of lengthy utterances, even with the mnemonic and notetaking
techniques described above. Many interpreters respond to the situation by controlling the turn-
taking, that is, by intervening to interpret in shorter phrases. In limited situations, and only rarely,
it may be wise to exert control over a speaker. The competent interpreter strives to be as
unobtrusive as possible in the course of proceedings, but even the most practiced interpreter may
have an occasional need to interrupt testimony, ask for repetition, or use gestures or physical
proximity to slow speech. Overuse of these techinques, however, may indicate a need to work on
the major or subskffls of interpreting. Because nonverbal, visual cues (facial expressions,
gestures, and the like) are just as important as verbal cues in the perception of messages, it is
important for the interpreter to sit next to the witness, or to stand next to the defendant when the
latter is being addressed by the judge, and be able to see the defendant’s entire body (for a
discussion of the lack of visual cues in remote interpreting.
C. Practice/Exercises for Improving Skills
1. Exercises to Enhance Listening/Attending Skills
a. To increase your awareness of nonverbal cues, observe conversations you cannot hear
(e.g., across a crowded room, outside your window, or on the television with the
volume turned down). Pay attention to the individuals’ facial expressions, eye gaze,
posture, and gestures, as well as the distance they maintain from each other, and try to
guess what the conversation is about. Do this exercise in all your working languages,
if possible, and compare the differences.
b. Another way to observe nonverbal cues is to listen to someone on the telephone (or in
another situation in which you cannot see the person you are hearing) and to analyze
the voice tone, volume, pitch, and noises such as tongue clicking and sighing,
comparing them with the content of the message. Again, try to do this exercise in all
your working languages and compare the difference.
c. Go to a store with a friend, and ask the clerk about an item on the shelf or rack. Five
minutes later, try to repeat to your friend exactly what the clerk said.
d. When you are conversing with others, frequently ask, “What do you mean by that
term?” to determine what other people mean when they talk and how they use words
differently from you.
e. Ask someone to giveyou directions to a place you know how to get to. Then ask
someone to direct you to a place you could not find yourself. Compare what goes on
in your mind in the two ases. Do you jump ahead or lose your train of thought?
f. Analyze your listening errors. The next time you have a conversation with some one
and miss part of what the person said, immediately analyze what went wrong. Were
you daydreaming? Still handling something said earlier? Distracted by an unfamiliar
or emotion-laden word? ‘vVas there physical interference?
g. While listening to a speech or lecture, make an early evaluation of the speaker’s intent
or point, the solution being proposed, or the conclusion the person will reach. Make
another evaluation at the end of the speech. How did your two assessments differ?
h. Pay special attention to “linkage words” that determine the relationships of ideas
(such as “therefore’” however’ “unless”). Make a list of such words, and listen to how
they are used. Do this in all your working languages.
2. Memory-Building Exercises
a. Pay attention to how your memory works. Are you a visualizer, a verbalizer, neither,
or both? When you forget something you heard, try to analyze the type of interference
that prevented you from storing or retrieving the information.
b. To enhance your retention, have someone read a series of numbers (remember
that the STM capacity may be limited to five to nine chunks, and how many numbers
you will be able to recall depends on whether you can find patterns in them and
organize them into chunks). As soon as you are able to give back seven numbers
correctly, try the same exercise but say the numbers backward. You need to be
capable of retaining the entire series of seven numbers in your STM in order to say
them backward.
c. To increase your analytical skills, read a newspaper or magazine and stop after each
story; try to summarize the contents in one sentence. Do this in all your working
languages.
d. Repeat this exercise with oral input. (News magazine shows on television and talk
shows on radio are good sources, all available through the Internet.) During a
commercial break, summarize the main idea in one sentence.
e. Have someone record passages of newspaper or magazine articles for you to work
with in the exercises listed below (in all your working languages). Try to choose texts
about general subjects, without too much technical terminology or statistics.
Alternatively, record radio and television talk shows or interview programs (choose
programs in which the speakers are talking extemporaneously, not reading from a
prepared script). In these exercises, you will not be translating, merely repeating the
information in the same language. Gradually increase the length of the passages as
you become more adept at the exercises:
1) Listen to the passage without taking any notes, and try to repeat as much
information as possible.
2) Listen to the passage and take down “key words” that will help you remember the
content. Then try to repeat as much information as possible. Compare the results
you obtained by taking notes to those you obtained without any notes. This will
give you an indication as to whether you need to take notes in the interpreting
setting.
3) Listen to the passage and try to repeat it verbatim (notetaking optional).
4) As you listen to the passage, try to condense the information into a few
meaningful units, bearing in mind your STM capacity for information, for
example, if someone lists a series of jobs that have been held, you can group the
jobs by location, type of product, and so forth. A string of numbers can be lumped
into manageable chunks (e.g., people tend to state their Social Security numbers
in groups such as 348, 26, 9801 instead of 348269801). If the speaker lists all the
parts of the body where there is pain, you can rearrange them in logical order
from head to toe. Note, however, that when interpreting actual testimony, the
order of the speaker’s words should not be changed except as required by the
syntax of the Target Language.
5) If the subject matter of the text is a controversial one about which you have a
strong opinion, pay attention to your reaction while listening. Make sure your
rendition reflects the opinion of the speaker, not your own.
f. Obtain transcripts of question-and-answer testimony and perform text analysis and
chunldng exercises. finally, try to recall the questions and answers verbatim.
g. Repeat the above exercises, but now interpret between your working languages as
you do so.
