(Last Updated On: June 15, 2015)

Why take notes during telephone interpreting calls?

Telephone interpreting is a quite new method used for breaking the language barriers. Despite its obvious advantages, such as cost lowering and almost immediate availability, telephone interpreting has a major disadvantage: lack of visual contact between client and interpreter. During face-to-face interpreting, the interpreter can get extra information from the body language of the  participants, such as changes in the facial expression or the raise of a hand, while telephone interpreting calls do not offer any visual clues to help the interpreter.

This is why extra skills, such as note taking, attentive listening and good memory are a very important help during telephone interpreting calls.  A good interpreter must have them all in a perfect mixture in order to be able to get better results in his work.

Here is some basic advice on note taking during telephone interpreting calls:

• Try to take notes all the time, briefly mentioning the main ideas stated by each party. At the end of the call, you will have a pretty good image of the conversation thread and, if needed, you will even be able to retrieve previous statements from the speech.
• Pay high attention to numbers (no matter if they are money-related or not) and always write them down for future reference. This kind of information is usually forgotten very fast.
• As not all the speakers are able to stop after short segments in order to let the interpreters do their job properly, you should develop a high speed note taking system, containing symbols, abbreviations  or keywords  instead of sentences.
• Some people only note main ideas and numbers. This might have bad consequences as some information could remain untranslated.

Taking notes during telephone interpreting calls is a great way to help the interpreter keep up with the other people involved in the meeting.