Earticle

With the increase in the English literacy of Koreans, more and more Koreans have become sensitive to unnatural Korean sentences in translation that mimic the linguistic features of English. This increased sensitivity has activated research on so-called translationese, "awkwardness or ungrammaticality of translation". However, most of the research until now has been constrained to translation whereas interpreting, the oral translation activity, has not been in the limelight. Therefore, this study aims to identify reasons for unnatural sentences generated in English-Korean consecutive interpreting and propose corresponding interpreting strategies to make the interpreting output sound more natural to Koreans. The reasons for translationese would vary, but this study will take the linguistic typological view to construe the phenomenon, especially focusing on the verb orientation of Korean and the noun orientation of English.

This preliminary study is the first in a series of studies aimed at improving the self-assessment of undergraduate translation and interpreting students. Self-assessment is crucial to developing self-directed learning skills and enabling formative assessment - key components of lifelong learning competence. The study looks at the consecutive interpreting performance of two cohorts: eight students (4-5 sessions) from Autumn 2023 and six students (3-4 sessions) from Spring 2024. The accuracy of the students' self-assessments was compared with the teachers' assessments. Three key findings emerged: i) the correlation between student self-assessments and instructor ratings increased progressively from week 1 to week 4; ii) high-performing students' self-assessments were more closely aligned with instructor ratings; and iii) the greatest agreement between student and instructor ratings occurred when rating accuracy. This initial study sets the stage for future research to develop better teaching methods for self-assessment in translation and interpreting education. The findings suggest several implications for teaching, which are discussed along with plans for longer-term research.

This study explores how much of omissions and mistranslations in English-Korean consecutive interpreting are related to the problems in note-taking, and investigates ways to reduce omissions and mistranslations in interpreting through improving note-taking. Eleven first semester students in an interpreting and translation graduate program participated in the study. They interpreted a video clip on the US-Korea relationship as part of their mid-term exam. Their interpreting was recorded, transcribed and analyzed in conjunction with their notes and the source text. The omissions and mistranslations in the interpreting were tracked back to their notes to see whether and how they were marked on the notes, and how that in turn affected the interpreting output. Analyses found that around 80% of omissions and 50% of mistranslations were absent from the notes; 50% of mistranslations were marked on the notes but with some issues. Further analysis of the notes revealed three patterns of note-taking that mostly lead to mistranslations: 1) poor structuring, 2) wrong key-words, 3) unrecognizable symbols and abbreviations. Pedagogical implications and limitations of the study are discussed.

This paper deals with notetaking skills which are key elements of consecutive interpreting performance and reports findings from a pilot study on interpreters’ consecutive interpreting with notes. With a view to contributing to consecutive interpreting training, this paper discusses basic principles in notetaking and some effective notetaking skills that may contribute to the enhancement ofinterpreting performance. The pilot study examines five interpreters’ consecutive interpreting performances and their notes taken with a Smartpen. The findings suggest three types of efficient notetaking skills. First, interpreters need to adopt dynamic notetaking. Dynamic notetaking refers to taking additional notes swiftly not necessarily following the left-to-right and top-down movement, storing temporarily key information in their working memory while catching up with the source text. Second, interpreters need to take a note of the syntactic structure of the source text in order to effectively reproduce a complicated or convoluted sentence. Third, interpreters need to use symbols in a consistent manner in order to avoid confusion and misinterpretation. Just as the use of a Smartpen enabled the researchers to analyse the subjects’ notetaking in real time, the Smartpen is expected to be a useful tool for teaching and training notetaking skills. Given the limitations of research methodology, it would be worthwhile to examine if training these skills leads to the enhancement of consecutive interpreting performance through a large scale experimental study.

This study aims to analyze disfluency observed in consecutive interpreting performances of three second-semester and three fourth-semester trainee interpreters. This study analyzed the duration of interpreting performance (articulation duration, phonation ratio, and pauses), fillers, repairs, repetitions and hesitations. While there were no major differences between the two groups in the use of fillers and the duration of the interpreting performance, it was observed that the second-semester students achieved a lower degree of accuracy in their performance than their counterparts. This result indicates that the second-semester students might use omissions because of the problems in note taking or note reading. The two groups showed considerable differences in repairs, repetitions and hesitations. It seems the differences were caused by the different levels of interpreting skills and abilities due to the different duration of the training. This study provides pedagogical implications that the interpreter education needs to recognize the importance of increasing trainee interpreters’ knowledge of disfluency and providing a greater focus on lowering their degree of disfluency to improve the interpreting quality.

Graduate-level conference interpreting training in Korea has existed for over three decades. And yet, not enough has been discussed on the specific contents and methods of interpretation teaching and learning. That is to say, a prototype for interpretation pedagogy has yet to be established for current and future teachers' reference. However, this much is known: Because interpreting skills can only be acquired by the practice-makes-perfect method, a typical interpreting session naturally comprises hands-on training followed by critiquing. Given that students as a group engage in discussions throughout the class in seeking optimal solutions to issues ranging from content anticipation to interpretation product evaluation, collaborative learning is at the center of the interpretation classroom. But there is a greater need for scholarly discussion on the specifics and dynamics of interaction among students leading to effective learning within the framework of collaborative learning. The current study presents basic guidelines for the English-into-Korean consecutive interpreting class with particular focus on group brainstorming and peer assessment as the two main forms of collaborative classroom activity. The study covers potential hindrances to collaborative knowledge construction, role division among students, and teacher's session management according to time allotment. It concludes with a speech text sample presenting areas of consideration for participants of collaborative learning activities in the interpreting class.

Note-taking is one of the critical skills for consecutive interpretation. While students have expressed difficulties in mastering this particular skill, the pedagogical discussion on note-taking remains relatively lacking as it is believed to be very personal, and therefore, has no rules. With some principles of note-taking discussed, this study aims to review those principles and identify ones that demand more attention than others from the pedagogical perspective by exploring notes taken from undergraduate students. In class, it would be efficient and effective to address first the difficulties that many students share as opposed to the ones that are less common. The analysis of 90 notations taken by 33 students reveals three principles that students commonly have difficulties in application: employing a vertical structure in a functioning manner; preserving links; utilize abbreviations for long words or phrases. It also showed that many students do not distinguish facts from claims in their notes, which is not discussed much in the principles proposed by previous literature.

Notetaking is a useful skill in consecutive interpreting that assists an interpreter with their memory. However, the useful tool may pose a major obstacle for interpreter trainees. There is a considerable amount of research available that provides general knowledge and various examples of what and how to note (Lee 2017; Gillies 2017). Yet, the research does not seem to provide just enough resources to support beginners in notetaking; and some researchers even suggest that employing the resources is mostly personal preference (J. Choi 1998: 91; Jones 1998/2002). This gap in the perceived number of resources and the seemingly free but let-alone policy from students’ perspectives may posit a need for additional exploration on the subject. Of myriads of items related to practical notetaking resources, this study concentrates on verbs. Verbs are a key constituent in a clause that can be challenging to grasp in speech because it normally comprises only one or two words and is thus quickly followed by the remainder of the clause. The theoretical framework of this study is Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) which, as in interpreting, prioritizes meaning in analyzing texts. The outcome of the study includes suggestions of notetaking symbols for some types of verbs and the affirmation of the researcher’s suggestions as confirmed through usage on the students’ test.

This study examines the notetakings of two groups of students performing Korean into English consecutive interpreting. The aim of the investigation is to compare the notetaking records of two groups of students showing discrepancy in interpreting performance: Group A consist of five students in the top 20 percentile in the consecutive interpreting performance while Group B are five students randomly chosen from the remaining 80 percent of the class. The analysis of the notetakings showed students, in general, took note of nouns in the Source Language. The second highest frequency of notes was symbols. Both groups of students took notes more in the Source Language compared to the Target Language. The study also showed that Group A students, in general, took less notes than Group B students, which may be an indication that students allocate much more efforts on notetaking and there are much less efforts for other tasks such as information processing or planning for target expression. As for "what" students took notes of, no clear differences were found between the two groups.