Master of Memory: Accelerated learning, education, memorization - MMem 0387: How an interpreter can memorize sentences quickly

Episode Date: September 1, 2015

Rosemary is an interpreter and has to memorize 2-3 sentences in one language very quickly in order to translate them into the other language. Even with some quick note taking, it’s difficult to remember the content of the sentences while translating quickly. I present some suggestions for using a variety of techniques instead of just […]

Master of Memory 387. Welcome to Master of Memory. I'm Timothy, and I'm here to answer your accelerated learning questions every day and to inspire and empower you to learn anything you want to learn faster than ever. Rosemary submitted a written question at masterofmemory.com slash question. Rosemary says, I'm an interpreter. I'm going to be taking my oral test within a few weeks. What's the best way to remember three to four sentences of dialogue long enough so that I can render it into the other

language? I take minimal notes, subject, verb, object, to help my brain, but I tend to forget what I wrote down, plus it takes my attention off of my listening. Is there a way to do this successfully? My oral test is for the court. Thanks so much for any insight. So once again, very much like episode 374, this is a quick practical application of short-term memorization. Many people say we don't have to remember things anymore, we can just look them up, but that's simply not true. In 374, we saw that people still need to memorize numbers really fast. And here in this episode, 387, we have short-term memorization of a couple of sentences or three or four sentences, actually.

So Rosemary, similar to the advice that I gave back in episode 374, I would suggest that you memorize some of the words one way and some of the words another way. So you want to remember some of the words auditorily and orally, and then the other words you should write down, the easier keywords probably. So the harder ones you'll repeat to yourself, and the easier ones you can write down. Now if your mind is in two places that makes it a lot harder, but if you have a little bit of space then this can help a whole lot. So let's say for example that you have to remember, let's see, I'll just take one of your sentences from your question. You said, I'm going to be taking my oral test within a few weeks. What's the best way to remember three to four sentences of dialogue long enough

so that I can render it into the other language? That's tough, but I'll take, let's say, the hardest words, oral and, let's see, remember, dialogue, render. Yeah, oral, remember, dialogue, render. Oral, remember, dialogue, render. So I chose the hardest keywords that would be maybe the hardest for me to remember. But while I'm doing that, I'm also going to write down in between them a few other words. Like, let's see, going, and then best way, and then long enough, and other language. So I'm remembering some of the words one way, but I'm writing down some of the easier words

so that what happens is those things are added to each other. I don't use the same memory for two different things. I use my auditory and oral memory, repeating the hardest words, and I write down the easier words so I don't have to try to remember those. Now, something that you might do is, since you're in a particular field in the court, you might have some prepared mnemonics for frequently used difficult keywords. Let's say there are some words that are just hard for you to remember consistently, and you want to create a standard mnemonic for that.

Maybe a particular word is always a dirty boot for you. So just imagine that that's a dirty boot and place it someplace in the court. And then anytime that word comes up, you don't even have to worry about remembering that. You just, you know, in your imagination, place a dirty boot somewhere. And you can just pull that out when you're interpreting the sentence. Then besides those difficult keywords, of course course you'll remember the rest of the dialogue that you have to interpret using the methods that I talked about earlier in the episode. So Rosemary, why don't you give that a try and let me know how it goes. I'd love to continue

helping you with this as we go along. For everyone listening, what do you want to learn? The world's knowledge can be yours. Leave your learning request at masterofmemory.com slash question and I'll talk to you again soon.