Context preparation & repetition
1. Read a number of source texts. Highlight (eg underlined) but don’t look up or note down terms and expressions that are important in this context (even if you know them in all your languages already). Also highlight unknown terminology. Highlight major substantive declarations and explanations in a different colour (eg blue).
“…include not only unfamiliar technical terms, but also recurring topical items of a more general nature, in order to contextualize yourself and to increase their ‘availability#’, so that they are on the tip of your tongue when you need them (AIIC 2000)”
2. Go back to the first source text and work through all of them again. This time reading only the highlighted substantive declarations and look up the unknown terminology. Don’t note down the translation you find.
3. Go back to the first source text and work through all of them again. Now test yourself on the important terms and unknown terminology.
4. Go back to the first source text and work through all of them again. Now write down the terminology on the source text. (This works for editable files eg in Word or pdf and for paper documents but not for webpages).
5. Go through all of the source texts again copying the terms into a glossary compilation and testing yourself on them as you go along.
6. Turn the terminology into flashcards (digital or paper) and test yourself on them. Test both your understanding of the concept in question and whether you can interpret it from source to target language. You only need to test yourself in the direction you interpret.
*Exercise from Consecutive Interpreting – a Short Course, Andrew Gillies