In order for Macao Polytechnic Institute (MPI) to strengthen its ten-year cooperation with the Council of the European Commission (EC), a delegation from the EC comprising Dr. Florika Fink-Hooijer, Director-General of the Department for Interpretation and Ms. Maria Preter, representative of the Director-General of the Department for Translation, visited the Institute on 9 October. The delegation paid a visit to MPI’s Chinese-Portuguese-English Machine Translation Laboratory as well as its Interpretation Laboratory. They received a warm welcome from MPI’s President Professor Lei Heong Iok among others. Dr. Hooijer commended on the sophisticated Chinese-Portuguese machine translation engine which has lent immense support to interpretation and translation tasks. She hopes to enhance academic cooperation with MPI to nurture more professional translators.

According to MPI’s President Professor Lei Heong Iok, Macao has a rich cultural and language history. In aligning with China’s ‘Belt and Road’ initiative and Macao’s positioning as a business service platform between China and Portugal, the community has seen an increasing demand for specialised services such as Chinese-Portuguese translation and voice recognition. MPI’s Chinese-Portuguese-English Machine Translation Laboratory is a collaboration between the Institute, Global Tone Communication Technology Co., Ltd and Guangdong University of Foreign Studies. The laboratory utilises such technologies as machine translation, cross-language big database and speech recognition and charts its future direction in the domains of data, technology and application. Current research projects include Chinese-Portuguese and Portuguese-Chinese statistical machine translation, embedded machine translation technology, machine translation technology based on neural networks and Portuguese voice-recognition technology.

Cooperation between MPI and EC began in 2006, including MPI's conferment of an honorary professorship on Professor José Manuel Durão Barroso, former President of the European Commission; a joint Master's degree in Translation offered by MPI and the EC; MPI's participation in the EC's Erasmus Mundus programme, and the joint efforts of MPI and EC in training over 100 Portuguese teachers and translators from the Chinese Mainland, Macao and neighbouring regions. During the meeting, MPI and EC further explored various areas of academic cooperation, expressing hopes that such new projects will create even brighter prospects for both parties.

Dr. Florika Fink-Hooijer, Director-General of the Department for Interpretation (sixth from left), visits MPI’s Chinese-Portuguese-English Machine Translation Laboratory

MPI’s President Professor Lei Heong Iok (third from right), introduces research projects conducted at the Chinese-Portuguese-English Machine Translation Laboratory to visiting guests

Dr. Florika Fink-Hooijer, Director-General of the Department for Interpretation visits MPI’s Interpretation Laboratory