In a bid to enhance exchanges and cooperation, Professor Huang Youyi, member of the CPPCC national committee and Executive Vice President of the Translators Association of China (TAC), and Professor Zhong Weihe, Chairman of the Language Big Data Alliance (LBDA), visited the Chinese-Portuguese-English machine translation lab at the Macao Polytechnic Institute (IPM) on August 9. Professor Li Xiangyu of IPM welcomed the visiting delegation. Huang Youyi praised the Chinese-Portuguese machine translation engine as a world-leading one, which can provide cutting-edge voice identification and other technical support for the development of the ¡°Belt and Road¡± Initiative and the "China-Portugal Business and Trade Service Platform". He hoped that the lab will accelerate its R&D and contribute to Macao's language service industry at an early date.
Mr. Costa, Prime Minister of Portugal (fifth from left), unveils the Chinese-Portuguese-English Machine Translation Lab
Professor Li Xiangyu, President of the IPM, said that there are about 200 million native Portuguese speakers worldwide. With more frequent exchanges between China and Portuguese-speaking countries in recent years, there is a growing demand for Chinese-Portuguese translation and voice identification service. Unveiled by Portugal's Prime Minister Antonio Costa, the Chinese-Portuguese-English machine translation lab co-founded by IPM, GTCOM and Guangdong University of Foreign Studies focuses on data, technology and application and features a large diversity of language materials. By adopting such technologies as machine translation, cross-language big data think-tank and voice identification as well as broadly classified corpus and sentence pairs, it is aimed to cover all the areas that are closely related to the Macao society, including public administration, law and economy.
TAC Executive VP Professor Huang Youyi (fourth from left) visits the Chinese-Portuguese-English Machine Translation Lab at IPM
Professor Huang said that the lab had made remarkable achievements in studying academic theories and solving technical problems. It not only provides a good experimental environment for Chinese-Portuguese translation, but also lays a solid foundation for providing technical and platform support for the all-round economic, trade and cultural exchanges between China and Portuguese-speaking countries. At the same time, the Chinese-Portuguese machine translation engine created by the lab has become the world's leading engine of its kind, providing cutting-edge voice identification and other technical support for the development of the ¡°Belt and Road¡± Initiative and the "China-Portugal Business and Trade Service Platform". Professor Huang hoped that the lab will accelerate its R&D and contribute to Macao's language service industry at an early date. Professor Huang and Professor Zhong both gave valuable suggestions on the lab's future development and work.