Abstract (eng)
The present study focuses on the language choice in note-taking for consecutive interpretation from German into Italian. Therefore, it was essential to undertake an empirical consecutive interpretation with eight interpreting students from the IULM University (Italy) and to analyze their consecutive notes. Moreover, test subjects took part to an interview in order to get information about their prior knowledge in note- taking technique and their translation experience. These results were compared with the analyses of the notes.
The present study makes no claim to completeness in statistical sense, because of the small group of test subjects. Nevertheless, this study is linked to other note-taking researches made by Dam (2004), Szabó (2006) und Frey (2007) and it tries to describe theoretical concepts of Bistra Alexieva, Wilfried Becker, Andrew Gillies, Jean Herbert, Gérard Ilg, Sylvie Lambert, Heinz Matyssek, Eva Paneth, Jean-François Rozan, Danica Seleskovitch, Henri Van Hoof and Wilhelm K. Weber.
All test subjects used a mixed-language notation system characterized by their working languages: Italian, German, English and French. The analyses of the notes showed that, all eight interpreting students wrote in the same way in their A-, B- and C- language. English was used in such a massive way not only because words can be written quickly and concisely, but also because several IULM’s lectures were conducted in English, so students had a great familiarity with this language. Test subjects’ notation elements showed that, in a favorable environment (such as the source text and a not limited set of symbols) students used a language-independent notation technique. 87.5% of the test subjects explained during the interview, which language(s) they would use according to the interpreting issue, the speech velocity of the source text and their preparation level. Nevertheless, the analyses of the notes showed different results and demonstrated that, students were not always aware in which language they would have noted.