UM has achieved one breakthrough after another in Chinese/Portuguese machine translation
Over the past two decades, the University of Macau (UM) has developed various innovative translation systems, such as the PCT, a Chinese/Portuguese translation system; the Um2T, an online interactive Chinese/Portuguese machine translation system; and the next-generation online Chinese/Portuguese translation platform, which is expected to be launched onto the market by the end of this year. These innovative translation systems reflect UM’s effort to help build Macao into a service platform for business collaboration between China and Portuguese-speaking countries.
With the implementation of the Belt and Road Initiative, business and cultural interaction between China and Portuguese-speaking countries has become more frequent, which has in turn created a growing demand for high-quality machine translation systems. Relying on Macao’s unique geographic advantage and abundant supply of language professionals, UM has been in close collaboration with top universities in Portugal, Brazil, and mainland China, such as Tsinghua University, to deepen scientific research and transform research results into marketable products for the Chinese/Portuguese translation market in Macao and the Greater Bay Area. These products have been adopted by government departments, law firms, schools, and translation companies. UM’s Natural Language Processing and Chinese/Portuguese Machine Translation Laboratory has completed the development and testing of the next-generation online Chinese/Portuguese translation platform. The trial version of the platform is expected to be launched onto the market by the end of this year.
The PCT system, Macao’s first Chinese/Portuguese machine translation system, was developed by UM and registered as a trademark, and is now in its third version. Another innovative translation system developed by UM in recent years is the Um2T system. Based on the state-of-the-art neural machine translation architecture and technology, Um2T is accessible to Chinese/Portuguese translators from around the world. In terms of training language professionals, UM has developed a Portuguese verb auto-analysis and generation system and an online Portuguese language learning platform, both of which are accessed over 1,000 times a day. The multidisciplinary team at the laboratory has won numerous prizes for their achievements, including a second prize at the Macao Science and Technology Awards in the Science and Technology Progress Award category for their project that studied the technologies related to Chinese/Portuguese machine translation systems and the applications of the systems. Last year, the neural-based machine translation systems developed by the lab won several prizes at the constraint English-to-Chinese machine translation campaign organised under the 13th China Workshop on Machine Translation (CWMT 2017).