Chapter 6: Symbols

Chapter 6 Symbols

Mtro. Francisco Espinoza

UNIVERSIDAD AUTONOMA DE NUEVO LEON

What is a symbol?

A symbol doesn’t have to be a picture. It can be a single letter or a pair of letters. A symbol represents a concept, not a word. This is often what interpreters mean when they say “note the ideas [concepts], not the words!”

Chapter 6: Symbols

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Why use symbols?

Chapter 6: Symbols

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What to note with symbols

1. Concepts that come up again and again

In all sorts of speeches, there are concepts and expressions that are the stock and trade of every speaker, things that come up every time, such as verbs like agree, decide, discuss, propose, or think. Symbols for these concepts will be used again and again, every time you work in consecutive mode.

Frequently occurring VERBS

Chapter 6: Symbols

Frequently occurring NOUNS

VERBS or NOUNS

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2. Ideas that will recur on a given day

In any one meeting, certain terms or concepts will be particular to that day’s subject matter. It might be useful to have a symbol for “telecommunications”, “unbundling” or “last-mile” as these are longish to write and may come up dozens of time

Chapter 6: Symbols

The symbols need not be pictorial or complicated. They may also be combina- tions of existing symbols. And even something as simple as a pair of letters (used in accordance with the rules for symbols previously described) will be clear and save you plenty of time.

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How to use symbols

Chapter 6: Symbols

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Organic§ symbols

Organic means that one symbol should be the starting point for other related sym- bols. A group or family of symbols will grow from a common root. In this way, you will reinforce your recognition of the symbols you know and by having a smaller number of “basic” symbols you will tax your memory less.

One of the most commonly used symbols is a simple square that denotes country, nation, land, state, depending on the context. (It has been borrowed from Japanese, where a similarly shaped character means country.) Using our square as a starting point and by adding a couple of letters, we can arrive at a whole range of symbols, with no extra effort required.

Chapter 6: Symbols

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Arrows

The arrow is the most versatile and arguably the most useful of all the symbols. It is the ultimate distillation of meaning. You can do pretty much anything with arrows as long as what you note remains clear to you! This versatility leaves the interpreter with great freedom to choose the vocabulary of their version of the speech.

Chapter 6: Symbols

With other types of arrows, you could also note the following:

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People

One of the easiest symbols is based on the circle, representing a head, and by extension meaning person. This gives us two sets of symbols, firstly for human emotion and thought.

The circle can also be used to denote a person who is associated with that sym- bol’s meaning. This can be done by adding a raised circle to another symbol.

Chapter 6: Symbols

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Underlining

If in our notes we want to show that something is important or even more important, it is quicker to underline it than write out more words. It is also useful for degrees of a quality: thus large, huge, colossal might be noted as big, big, and big, respectively. Similarly if something is less clear-cut, we can show this through broken underlining. Underlining is a very useful technique and can give us a whole new wealth of concepts from a symbol or word we have noted.

Chapter 6: Symbols

You can, of course, underline anything, words included. So say becomes assert and poor becomes destitute.

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Where to find symbols

The symbols you use should have some element of the mnemonic; that is, they should mean something to you by association (for example, my chimney stack on page 103). They should create associations in your mind. This means that copying other people’s symbols is not always a good idea.

Use the symbols you know, and try to build on them “organically”. Look at the following very incomplete list of examples. I will not suggest any “meaning” for the symbols, but if you immediately recognize a symbol or associ- ate it with a concept, then that will be a good symbol for you to use.

Chapter 6: Symbols

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How many symbols?

There is a temptation to try and find symbols for all sorts of things, and you will find suggestions for dozens (even hundreds) of symbols in different books and on various webpages. There is no right or wrong number of symbols to use.

Please do not learn lists of symbols as you learnt vocabulary lists for tests at school! Symbols should be so immediately obvious that no such “learning” should be necessary.

Chapter 6: Symbols

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If you follow the rules in this chapter, you’ll see that you can actually get by with relatively few symbols indeed. Why? Because:

1. Many concepts are repeated extremely regularly in the type of discourse you’ll be interpreting (rise, fall, suggest, think, environment, price, cost, supply, demand etc.).
2. You can use the same symbol for many synonymous terms.
3. “Good” symbols will choose themselves because the ones you use regularly will be the ones you remember. If you’ve “forgotten your symbol” for something, then it probably didn’t mean enough to you or get used enough to be useful. So forget it!

Rozan reckoned twenty symbols were enough.

Chapter 6: Symbols

Grammar

Structural indicators and links

Nouns, verbs and adjectives

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