Consecutive and Simultaneous Interpreting
This domain tests cognitive management of interpreting modes: how you allocate attention, structure notes, control lag, and recover from overload. Questions often present a short scenario and ask what the interpreter should do next, or name the mechanism behind a described failure.
Effort Models
Gile's Effort Models describe interpreting as competing efforts plus coordination: Listening and Analysis, Short-term Memory, Production, and Coordination. Simultaneous work with a prepared text adds a Reading Effort. The tightrope hypothesis holds that errors cluster when total effort approaches saturation, so reducing one effort - preparation, glossary, seating, sound - protects quality.
Consecutive: notes are an aid, not a transcript
Rozan's seven principles remain the standard scaffold: note the idea rather than the word; use abbreviation; mark links; mark negation; mark emphasis; write vertically (subject above, verb and object below, offset); and shift diagonally for subordinate ideas. Numbers, names and units deserve their own column and a spoken back-check.
Simultaneous: lag and segmentation
Ear–voice span (décalage) must be long enough to resolve structure but short enough to protect memory. Anticipation is legitimate when collocation or syntax makes the ending predictable; monitoring catches number and negation slips.
Worked example
A speaker lists six conditions rapidly under consecutive. Reasoning: do not write sentences. Record each condition as a keyword on its own vertical line, mark negation and contrast with symbols, and offset examples to the right. Deliver in the source order with explicit links, then check the number of conditions against your notes before finishing.
Traps that cost marks
- Writing full words and losing the next proposition.
- Letting lag drift until memory collapses.
- Producing fluent but unmonitored numbers and negations.
- Treating consecutive notes as an archival record.