3.1.1. Main Ideas

The first thing to be noted should be main ideas. For the fact that the writing speed is always slower than speaking speed, it is impossible for the interpreter to write down everything spoken by the speaker. The interpreter is required to have the ability to identify, select and retain important ideas but omit anything which is not relevant to the understanding of the original speech. Furthermore, by recording the main ideas in notes, the interpreter easily traces back the structure of the speech; hardly misses out important ideas; and always keeps fidelity to the original content.

In order to determine the main ideas of the speech, the interpreter has to make sense analysis (смисловий аналіз) of what the speaker says. As noted by R. K. Min’yar-Beloruchev and O.V. Rebriy, sense analysis is not a direct structural component of the interpreter’s note-taking, but it is an important prerequisite of the notes. Notes are impractical without sense analysis, as both written and intellectual fixations of the source text at interpreting are not mechanical but systematical. This system exercises the following functions:

(A) ensuring meaningful memorizing which is many times as effective as mechanical memorizing;

(B) identifying the main lump of sense which, in the fixed form, will serve as key point for memory;

(C) transforming the text so that to adjust its syntactic structure to the special nature of the target language. [14:8]

While making notes in the consecutive interpreting the most important thing is to find those sense parts in the speech which would fix the basic meaning of the thought. In most cases these are the subject and the predicate expressed by the corresponding noun group and verb group in the sentence. In the consecutive interpreting figures and proper names are the most difficult things to remember, thus they should be always noted. The Professor R. K. Min’yar-Beloruchev points out three major types of notes:

1. Method of choosing words with the biggest sense load.

2. Transformation method using a number of lexical changes.

3. Method of choosing the key word (for example emotionally bound or lexically incomplete) [11: 64-75].

Now we turn to some examples of sense analysis of the source message and taking notes in compressed, shortened form.

First of all, it is worthwhile to quote Jean-Francois Rozan who was the first to suggest a principle of noting the ideas rather than the words. Take any French text and give it to 10 excellent English translators. The result will be ten very well translated texts, but ten very different texts in as far as the actual words used are concerned. The fact that we have ten good translations, but ten different texts, shows that what is important is the translation of the idea and not the word. This is even truer of interpretation since the interpreter must produce a version of the text in another language immediately. He must be free of the often misleading constraints that words represent. It is through the analysis and notation of the ideas that the interpreter will avoid mistakes and a laboured delivery.

Here is an example for notes taken in Ukrainian, given by O.V. Rebriy [14:9]:

e.g.: (full message): “Хвиля масового безладдя прокотилася по Індонезії після поширення чуток про майбутнє підвищення цін на основні продукти найбідніших верств населення – рис та картоплю.”

The “economical” formulation of the information given above: “Безладдя в Індонезії викликали чутки про зростання цін на рис та картоплю.”

Here is an example for notes taken in English:

e.g.: (this is the text of information message) “Ukraine lies on the crossroads of the ways from Asia to Europe, the geographical position of the country is considered to be very favourable for the development of its relations with the other countries of Europe, as well as with the countries throughout the world.”

In interpreter’s notes this text should be written more economically, for example: “Ukraine lies on crossroads (Asia & Europe) which is favourable for relations with other countries (of Europe & world).”

Here the main sense of the message is fixed, the rest details can be easily recalled by the interpreter from his/her memory.

The following table gives some examples of word expressions noted in shortly in English at interpreting from Ukrainian:

Full expression in source language	Shortened expression in source language	Shortened expression in target language
законодавчий орган влади	парламент	parliament
приймати участь у виборах президента	обирати президента	to elect the president
проводити військові операції	воювати	to fight
подати звіт	звітувати	to report
висловити подяку	дякувати	to thank
здійснювати інспекцію	інспектувати	to inspect
тримати під контролем	контролювати	to control
піддати критиці	критикувати	to criticize
застосувати право вето	накладати вето	to veto
надати допомогу	допомогти	to assist, to help

Table 2: Some examples of shortened expressions.