Lagging

The progression in the book グローバル時代の通訳 offers obvious practical exercises to apply outside the domain of interpreting training, to the larger advanced Japanese training realm. Lagging practice is the way to go on self-training with a delay of one word, then two words when repeating single words voiced over with a pause in between each. The next step is to do the same with short sentences of 20 characters on average, starting maybe from shadowing, then progressively moving on to one-step lagging, then 2 steps lagging. There are enough 単語 books in Japan to fulfill the need of voiced over single words lists in English and Japanese, although the キクタン series for instance are marred by noisy BGM and shrilling voices on steroid. The CD that comes with the Global book is tamed down in atmosphere but the content is a little short for extensive training. How one goes creating self-made voiced over words and short sentences recording? By asking someone of course, or maybe by using text-to-speech software solutions. In any case, when it comes to sentence, collecting adequate samples in terms of length may be challenging. Also especially in Japanese, sources may as usual be a major issue unless using news material is not seen as a problem. When it comes to English at least, the number of books for business English alone coming with English only recording of usually short sentences is overwhelming and a boon to be exploited.

The book goes on from single words to short sentences to longer sentences that requires paraphrasing or summarizing. It steps then to note taking and some reference to simul. This is a standard progression that could be cloned to produce subject specific books with multi-usage, both geared at native and non-native, student interpreters or advanced language trainees.

Note : at high-end training, using the 聞く日経 podcast for short (but vocabulary dense) sentences is probably a good approach. Securing less dense short sentences in Japanese for the same purpose may be the issue.