Introduction

Today, it would probably be difficult to imagine any international meeting without interpreters. Interpreters work in different situations, environments and organizations. They are employed by companies, courts, the police, health services, public administration, international organizations. From the point of view of the many environments in which interpreters work, different types of interpreting can be distinguished: court interpreting (courts of law), community interpreting (police, health service, public administration), conference interpreting (international organizations, conferences, meetings), to mention some common varieties of interpreting. The separate type of interpreting that I want to concentrate upon in this paper is consecutive interpreting (CI). In section 2, a brief history of conference interpreting, which embraces CI, will be presented by way of providing some background for later discussion. The aim of section 3 is to define interpreting and to distinguish between its main kinds. In section 4, I address in some detail several aspects of interpreting that make up for the individuality of consecutive interpreting and present the views on the theoretical aspects of note-taking during CI. This section also includes a discussion of the results of a questionnaire that I have given to ca. 30 interpreters, both beginner and experienced, to find out whether the suggestions that CI theorists make concerning note-taking are implemented in the practice of CI. Section 5 concludes the discussion.

A short history of CI

Conference interpreting emerged as a separate and a highly esteemed discipline around the turn of the 19th century.