The first thing you can do to improve your note taking for interpretation is simple—practice. You can listen to anything you want, ideally something in your industry, and then practice taking notes on what the speaker is saying. This might feel like an awkward exercise when you are interpreting for no one, but it is a very reliable way to improve your note taking skills because you are essentially simulating an interpreting job where you are listening to a speaker and then translating for an audience.

The next thing you can do is while practicing, think about symbols or shorter ways to write some words. This is especially important for medical contexts where words can be extremely lengthy and complicated. It is overall faster to quickly draw a symbol than it is to write out something really long like pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis. Of course, it might be a little impossible to have a specific symbol for every single diagnosis or word out there. So that is where the next idea comes to play.

You can try to figure out abbreviations for words. With the previous example, pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis was mentioned. How can this be shortened and abbreviated that it will be easy to write it quickly and recall what it is when you read it again later? Look at the word and try to split up. So for this, you could maybe do pne-mon-tr-mics-ilico-volc-niosis. The word has been shortened down by more than half and it is not that hard to recall when re-reading it. The way words will be abbreviated may vary between people, so just try to abbreviate words the way you feel you will remember them.

The next tip is to write out the words in a logical order for the language that you are interpreting to. If you are interpreting into English, try keeping everything in subject, verb, noun order. This will help to keep everything organized and make sure that you can keep track of how the sentence is structured. It will also help to make the interpreting a little faster because you will already have the sentence in the right order.

Interpreting is a very mentally taxing job that is not easily accomplished but tricks like note taking can really help to make the job a little easier to handle and less daunting a task. However, even note taking needs practice before it can be a completely reliable tool to assist interpretation. But following these tips will help you improve your note taking and really take you to the next level of interpreting.

When working on a large project, we have to be organized in our thoughts, in our workflow, and in both our physical and digital space. Every step or the must be clear-cut, and everything must be organized logically and efficiently. This includes labeling all of our files and folders clearly and consistently. When we organize our project documentation, the question we ask ourselves is, “Would the next person working on this project be able to jump in and find everything without any trouble?” This helps us make sure that everything is crystal clear to all of the team members involved, which in turn means that everyone will be able to work effectively. We also create spreadsheets with relevant and up-to-date project information, we keep our files organized in a location we can all access, and we make sure to update each other regularly on what we’ve done and what remains. Ultimately, having clear and understandable organization is the foundation of our work.

We organize the different phases of the project in a way that will help us meet the deadline. In addition to the actual translation, which can take a week or more, there needs to be editing and review, quality assurance, etc. We need to make sure that there is enough time for all of these phases, which are all necessary steps in producing an accurate, high quality translation. For example, in the Japanese-English medical records translation, we received work back from the translators several days before the official due date. We were then able to review the translations and communicate with the translators to settle any possible mistakes or issues. One way we approach this, for example, is to make comments in the delivered file regarding even the tiniest potential inconsistency, and send it back to the translator for clarification.

Another strategy we used, in addition to recruiting multiple translators who had demonstrated experience working in the medical field, was to also include an expert to help us identify less legible doctor’s notes. Part of the source files were handwritten doctor’s notes (which are notoriously difficult to read) so we made sure to find a professional who could help decipher these notes.

Finally, as with any project, there can be unexpected setbacks. We have to be prepared for anything and ready to do what it takes to get the job done, no matter what happens. For example, when one of our team members had an unexpected emergency and couldn’t complete certain parts of the review process that he was going to do, our other team members coordinated to make sure that it would get done.

While these challenges of large projects can take a lot of energy and time, it helps us to remember our end goal: delivering a great translation, and ultimately helping our client. These challenges are much easier to manage when we think about our clients and how they are depending on us to do our best. Our passion for helping people gives us the energy and drive we need to do our best and ensure that we deliver high quality translations!