Guests and participants of the ‘2nd World Chinese-Portuguese Translation Competition’ pose for a group photo
To enhance the exchange of Chinese-Portuguese translation techniques between students of higher education institutions around the world, to train Chinese-Portuguese translation professionals, and to further promote the application of advances in Chinese-Portuguese translation teaching and research in Macao, the Chinese Mainland and the Lusophone countries according to the ‘One Belt, One Road’ initiative, the awards ceremony of the “2nd World Chinese-Portuguese Translation Competition” was successfully held at Macao Polytechnic Institute. The competition attracted 117 teams from 34 higher education institutions from around the world to participate. The Communication University of China won the first prize overall and Macao Polytechnic Institute won the first prize under the category of special awards for teams from higher education institutions in Macao. Professor Huang Youyi, Executive Vice President of the Translators Association of China appreciated that this competition is the only one of its kind in the entire world. It provides guidance and encouragement for Chinese-Portuguese translators. Since the exchanges between China and Portuguese speaking countries are increasingly frequent, Chinese-Portuguese translation is becoming all the more demanding than at any time in history. This gives the competition far reaching significance.
Supported by the Secretary for Social Affairs and Culture of the Macao SAR Government and the Language Big Data Alliance (LBDA), jointly organized by the Tertiary Education Services Office and MPI, the awards ceremony of the “2nd World Chinese-Portuguese Translation Competition” was successfully held at the Auditorium of MPI at 16:30 on 25 July. Guests officiating at the ceremony included Dr. Alexis Tam (Secretary for Social and Cultural Affairs of the Macao SAR); Ms. Xu Ting, (Director of the Department of Culture and Education of the Liaison Office of the Central People’s Government in the Macao SAR); Professor Huang Youyi (Executive Vice President of the Translators Association of China, former Deputy Director-general of China Foreign Languages Publishing Administration); Mr Manuel Ricardo da Silva (Acting Consul-General of Portugal in Macao and Hong Kong); Mr. Sou Chio Fai (Director of the Tertiary Education Services Office of the Macao SAR); Professor Lei Heong Iok (President of MPI); Professor Hannelore Lee-Jahnke (Honorary President of the International Standing Conference of the University Institutes of Translators and Interpreters (CIUTI)); Professor Martin Fostner (former President of CIUTI) and Ms. Zhang Xiaodan (Deputy General Manager of Global Tone Communication Technology Co. Ltd). Around two hundred guests as well as representatives of participating teams together with their teachers attended the ceremony.
Speaking at the ceremony, Professor Lei Heong Iok stated that based on the success of the “1st World Chinese-Portuguese Translation Competition”, the participation this year is even more unprecedented. 117 teams from 34 higher education institutions across the world enrolled for the competition. Professor Lei congratulated all the winning teams of the World Chinese-Portuguese Translation Competition, wishing that the Competition would continue to be successfully held every year with the support of all the parties concerned and that the contribution made by the ever-increasing contestants to the Sino-Portuguese cultural exchange would become more and more profound. Professor Lei stated that in order to cooperate with the national development of the “Belt and Road” initiative and the development plan of the “Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area” as well as to contribute to the building of the “global technology and innovation hub” for the Greater Bay Area, Macao Polytechnic Institute utilized the advantages of its Portuguese teaching and Chinese-Portuguese translation teaching together with its professional resources like computing and English, to organise the World Translation Competition and at the same time strengthen the development of the Chinese-Portuguese Machine Translation Laboratory. The first phase of this strengthened development has already resulted in some achievements: the world’s largest parallel corpus of Chinese-Portuguese translation has been established, and the “Diz lá!” Portuguese language learning mobile application has been launched. Also, the Chinese-Portuguese online translation platform based on the neural network technique has been successfully developed along with the Chinese-Portuguese official document auxiliary translation system tailored for the Macao government. MPI has made great efforts to overcome the historical problem of resources for Chinese-Portuguese translation in Macao. The achievements above have been recognised by mainland China, Portuguese-speaking countries and the translation community and various government departments in Macao.
Professor Huang Youyi, the Executive Vice President of the Translators Association of China praised MPI’s broad international outlook, sharp academic vision, lofty social responsibility and commitment to translation education. MPI hosted the first World Chinese-Portuguese Translation Competition last year, which attracted great interest in the academic circles. Through this competition, students can improve their translation capabilities and enrich their academic experiences. Professor Huang said there are increasingly frequent exchanges between China and Portuguese speaking countries, which increases the demand for Chinese-Portuguese translation to a greater extent than at any time in history. This gives the competition a global significance.
The participating teams of the “2nd World Chinese-Portuguese Translation Competition” are each composed of two to three students and each team can have one coach; each team is required to translate the Portuguese source texts provided by the organiser, which contain at least 10,000 sentences from either articles or books. Upon receipt of the source texts from the organiser, competing teams should translate the Portuguese texts into Chinese within 3 months. To encourage more excellent teams to attend the competition, the prizes of the “2nd World Chinese-Portuguese Translation Competition” have been increased by 33% and 5 outstanding performance awards have been newly set. After months of competition, winners were announced at the awards ceremony. Liu Yuxuan and Wang Ruoxin from the Communication University of China, under the guidance of their teacher Yan Qiaorong, won first prize in the competition. The second prize was awarded to Tao Jueru, Wei Zirui, Zhou Ruizhe and their teacher Maria de Lurdes Nogueira Escaleira of MPI. The third prize went to Xia Bing, Sun Mingming and Li Peiwen and their teacher Xiao Yuerong of Xi’an International Studies University. To encourage tertiary institutions in Macao to participate in the competition, all entries from Macao were automatically entered to compete for special awards for teams from higher education institutions in Macao. The winning team in this category was from MPI and consisted of students Liu Jiaming, Song Chendong and Sérgio Manuel de Castro Almeida under the guidance of their teacher Ng Cen Ana. The second prize went to Ye Meng and Liu Yufan together with their teacher Tian Yuan from MPI. The 5 Outstanding Performance Awards went to Luo Yanshan, Wu Lingshan and Ge Jiabao with their teacher Sun Yiqi from the Polytechnic Institute of Leiria; Yuan Ye, Dong Sijia and Zhu Fangcheng with their teacher Li Pan from Beijing Jiaotong University; Tan Shuhan, Melissa Monteiro Dias and Mao Yaqi with their teacher Liu Jie from the University of Minho; Liu Xinyi, Guo Jieqiong and Lei Lei with their teacher Zhao Jingjian from Beijing International Studies University; and Peng Xiulan, Wei Suqi and Zhao Yayi with their teacher Zheng Jiabao from Sichuan International Studies University.
The first prize winning team delivered a speech at the ceremony, expressing their thankfulness towards the Academic Committee of the competition for their affirmative guidance and to the organiser for the valuable opportunity provided. The competition not only let them understand the beauty of Portuguese Literature but also at the same time to appreciate the lively and attractive nature of Chinese and Portuguese through the translation process. They formed a communication bridge between the two languages by what they have learned. The winning team shared the difficulties they had encountered during the competition, which included the problem of how to get a balance between accuracy and fluency. Last but not least, the team expressed their gratitude to their teacher for her patience and guidance in both theoretical and technical aspects. The speech was well received and rewarded with very positive recognition and applause from the audience.
