For the contents of notes, all agreed it’s necessary to take down key information, not all information. “The following contents need to be recorded: theme, subject, number, date, proper noun, pronunciation.” (Wang Yuqi, 2008: 9-18)

As for the notes form, “the use of abbreviation, punctuation, math symbols to simplify the contents needed to be noted, e.g. “E” for “economy”, “BD” for “virus”, “,” for undone or not ended, “。”for done or ended, “+” for besides. Symbols improve the efficiency of note-taking.” (XuFei, YinZhao, HanYang, 2010: 308-309)

As for the notes language, “based on Daniel Gille’s “Effort Model”, thinks that interpreter would save much energy if he takes notes in source language, because he doesn’t have to do translation when taking notes. All he needs to do is to classify the source information into several sense-groups. Therefore, the understanding about input information is complete and correct, and less source information is lost. If the interpreter writes notes in target language, he takes more efforts in understanding, analyzing and language translation. More pressure is endured by brain and the completion of information can’t be guaranteed, Consequently, the quality of interpreting is decreased.” (Wu Xiaolong, 2011: 16-19)文献综述

Denmark scholar Dam analyzed the interpreting notes taken by 4 interpreting student in the task of interpreting between Danish and Spanish with the founding that all the 4 students tended to use mother language in the two tasks. “Dam and other people also studied the relationships between figures, language choice, other variables and the output quality of interpreting. They found that taking down more notes is more efficient than taking down fewer notes. Using abbreviation and symbols are more efficient than complete sentence .Noting in mother language is more efficient than in second language.” (Wang Wenyu, Zhou Dandan, WangLing, 2010: 223-224)

Inspired by Dam’s research, domestic scholars Dai and Xu  operated an empirical study about the noting features in Chinese-English consecutive interpreting.  According to their study, “professional interpreters make fewer notes than nonprofessionals. Professional interpreters use less source language (Chinese) than the nonprofessionals, but use more target language (English) than the nonprofessionals.” (Dai Weidong, Xu Haiming, 2007: 136-144)

Wang made a further study ,which analyzed interpreting notes made by 12 senior students of English major in two interpreting tasks(interpreting from Chinese to English and from English to Chinese). “The study reached the following conclusion: 1. Quantity of notes has no salient relation with output quality of interpreting. 2. Students tended to use fewer symbols, but more words. Number of abbreviation has no salient relation with interpreting quality. Even though using abbreviation can accelerate the speed and help record more key information ,but improper abbreviation may cause identity difficulty, hence has no benefit for interpreting output but harms.3.The notes languages are mostly source language and have no relation with interpreting quality. ” (Wang Yuqi, 2007: 223-224)

However, Wang’s study only analyzed quantity and form of symbols in interpreting notes. Symbols and abbreviation represent concepts. Interpreters use symbols to save time and energy. The ultimate purpose of using symbols is to take those important concepts down. Concepts relate to information. By recognizing those symbols/concepts, interpreters recall core information of a sentence or passage. , Which information of a sentence should be taken down in notes? When quantity of notes is not the thing that differentiates effective interpreting and non-effective interpreting, what matters? What differs effective interpreting output and non-effective interpreting notes? This thesis tries to answer the above questions by an empirical study.