Macao Polytechnic Institute (MPI) successfully hosted the awards ceremony of the ‘World Chinese-Portuguese Translation Competition’ on 9^th of August. Jointly organised by the Tertiary Education Services Office and MPI, with the Language Big Data Alliance as the supporting unit, the competition aims 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 ‘Belt and Road’ initiative.

The awards ceremony of the ‘World Chinese-Portuguese Translation Competition’ was held at one of the lecture theatres of MPI at 3pm on 9 August. Guests officiating at the ceremony included Mr. Ip Peng Kin, Chief of the Office of the Secretariat for Social Affairs and Culture of Macau; Mr. Hong Bo, Head of the Culture and Education Office, Liaison Office of the Central People's Government in the Macao Special Administrative Region; Mr. Vitor Sereno, Consul-General of Portugal in Macao and Hong Kong; Professor Huang Youyi, Executive Vice President of the Translators Association of China, former Deputy Director-general of China Foreign Languages Publishing Administration and Co-chair of the Language Big Data Alliance; Professor Zhong Weihe, Co-chair of the Language Big Data Alliance; Professor Luis Filipe Martins Menezes, Vice President of the University of Coimbra, Portugal; Professor António José Nunes Mendes, Head of the Department of Informatics Engineering, University of Coimbra; Professor Lei Heong Iok, President of MPI; Ms. Sílvia Ribeiro Osório Ho, Acting Director of the Tertiary Education Services Office of the Macao SAR, and Professor Im Sio Kio Kei, Vice President of MPI. Around a hundred guests as well as representatives of participating teams together with their teachers attended the ceremony.

Speaking at the ceremony, Professor Lei Heong Iok, President of MPI stated that the competition had received very enthusiastic responses since its announcement. The competition attracted 87 teams from around the world, of which 58 met the competition's requirements. President Lei thanked the academic committee of this competition for their hard work in evaluating the entries. He also congratulated the winning teams and expressed his hopes that participants would neither feel conceited in victory nor lose heart in defeat. President Lei urged participants to cherish this valuable opportunity for academic exchange, further stating that the ‘World Chinese-Portuguese Translation Competition’ will take place again next year. He looked forward to an even better competition with more teams participating through the concerted effort of all parties.

Each participating team of the ‘World Chinese-Portuguese Translation Competition’ consists of two to three students who may appoint a teacher from the same higher education institution as their coach. Each team was required to translate Chinese source texts comprising 10,000 sentences from either articles or books provided by the organisers into Portuguese. After months of competition, winners were announced at the awards ceremony. Yang Yu, Li Ling and Francisca Monteiro from the Universidade do Minho, under the guidance of their teacher Yu Yibing, won first prize in the competition. The second prize was awarded to Patrícia Isabel Cecílio Vaz, Xing Yufei, Wong Lai Meng and their teacher Vânia Cecilia Almeida Rego of MPI. The third prize went to Zou Yuping, Liu Han and their teacher Wang Chengxu of Beijing Jiaotong 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 Chan Weng Tim, Sónia Jorge and Sofia Maria de Sousa Kou under the guidance of their teacher Maria de Lurdes Nogueira Escaleira. The second prize went to Hao Jianxiong, Liu Wen and Wang Ying together with their teacher Júlio Reis Jatobá from the University of Macau.

The winning teams of both categories each delivered a speech at the ceremony, expressing their feelings that despite occasional difficulties encountered during the last few months working on this translation task, they were able to reap very good educational rewards. Furthermore, the awards were recognition of their efforts and at the same time a great honour for them. They also thanked the organisers for bringing together students learning Chinese and Portuguese from around the world to put their language skills into practice, commenting that the competition was indeed a bridge to connect these two languages. The speeches of both winning teams were well received and rewarded with very positive recognition and applause from the audience.

In the media:

• Macao Daily News
• Va Kio Daily News
• Hou Kong Daily News
• Tai Chung Daily News
• Macau Times News
• Convention & Exhibition Economy Journal
• Today Macau News
• Tribuna de Macau News
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