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.

At a conference, an English-speaker stands at the front of a table giving a speech in a normal presentation voice.  There are two interpreters seated near the speaker at the front on opposite sides of the table.  Each interpreter wearing a transmitter listens to what the speaker says and verbally translates it into Spanish and French in a softer volume, so as not to interfere with the speaker or each other.  Through the receivers the participants seated around the table hear the interpretation very clearly in their own languages, no matter how far away from the speaker they are seated.  The conference goes off without a hitch.

What is magic is that there are two languages being spoken, but people only hear their own languages.  If you do not wear a receiver, you will hear the dominant voice and the two softer voices in the background.  The interpreters, however, ingeniously stay focused and manage to perform two complex tasks at once.  It is an almost mystifying process.  Just as in Robert Altman’s movies there are many conversations going on at once but it is still clear what the focus is, the focus is very defined in this situation.

Unlike consecutive, which is a stop-and-go process, simultaneous interpretation happens concurrently with the speaker, which saves time.  All the while, the brain has to perform two processes at once: listening to the speaker, and then converting the speech into another language and speaking it at the same time.  Practically everyone can drive a car, but not everyone can simultaneously interpret a language, which requires training.

Simultaneous interpretation is the preferable form for conferences.  Interpreters have to go through training to acquire their skills.  Technology and interpretation equipment are also employed to assist in the process.  Interpreters work in pairs and take a break after a certain amount of time due to the concentration required.  In the process, interpreters might also have to interpret a speaker’s tone and emotions and convey the speaker’s personal style.  In that sense, interpretation is almost like a performance.  In the end, because of the thrill and excitement, an interpreter can feel like a singer does after the curtain call.