Does Choice Of Language Really Matter In Taking Notes For Consecutive Interpreting?

There has been considerable debate over what language to use in taking notes for consecutive interpreting, but no consensus has been reached among scholars. In particular, little is known about the Chinese-English language pair with regard to language preference and efficiency. This study examines novice/trainee interpreters’ language use in relation to quality of interpreting. The findings revealed the interpreters generally used their L1 (A language) whether interpreting to or from that language, but that sometimes translators consistently chose either the source language (SL) or the target language (TL) relative to each translation. Contrary to some past findings that the use of source language facilitates interpretation, here we see that it correlated negatively with the quality of the renditions in this study. Students who used the target language obtained the highest scores of all the categories. The findings described in this paper help to identify Chinese trainee interpreters’ approach and, show that quantitative analysis of the relationship between language use in notes and the quality of interpretation adds to our understanding of the relationship between notes and awarded grades. Questions are raised about didactic issues in training interpreters.