On 21st July 2016, Macao Polytechnic Institute (MPI), Guangdong University of Foreign Studies (GDUFS) and Global Tone Communication Technology Co., Ltd. (GTC) signed a tripartite agreement to establish the Chinese-Portuguese-English (CPE) Machine Translation Laboratory. This first CPE machine translation laboratory will be housed in MPI.

Dr. Alexis Tam, Secretary for Social Affairs and Culture of the Macau SAR Government, gave his full support for MPI to cooperate with GTC and GDUFS in establishing the Chinese-Portuguese-English Machine Translation Laboratory. This cooperation is in line with Macao's policy to establish Macao as an exchange platform between China and Portuguese-speaking countries and as an international metropolis and to align with our country's ‘One Belt and One Road’ initiative.

Portuguese is not only the world's sixth largest lingua franca but is also an important working language of the European Union, as well as the official language of the world’s emerging economies such as Brazil and other BRIC countries. The Macao Polytechnic Institute has been engaged in language teaching and translation studies for more than a century and currently has a strong team of experienced teachers. MPI is an important and major base for training language specialists of teaching and research in Chinese-Portuguese and Chinese-English Translation. GTC is the first translation company in China and at the same time the largest language services enterprise. As the United Nations' sole translation and publishing services provider in China, GTC sets and advocates the standard of the Chinese language translation services industry. It has the world-leading multiple language big data analysis platform, a machine translation engine with billions of high quality language materials and the largest language service platform. Its service area covers all industries and offers services in over a hundred languages. GDUFS, one of the charter members of the Language Big Data Alliance (LBDA), is a leading university in China known to be one of the country's best institutions in terms of English and Portuguese teaching and education resources.

The three parties established the Chinese-Portuguese-English Machine Translation Laboratory based on three levels of cooperation: basic technology research, application of state-of-the-art technology and nurturing of talents, so as to provide support for the mutual development of mainland China, Portuguese-speaking countries and Macao. The laboratory seeks to exert the advantage of Macao as a meeting point of Chinese and Western culture and will strengthen Macao’s role in cultivating an exchange platform between the European Union and Portuguese-speaking countries. To help reduce as much as possible the bottleneck of cross-lingual and cross-cultural issues involved in Chinese-Portuguese-English Translation, the laboratory will assure the translation quality of Chinese-Portuguese-English terms, improve efficiency of translation and introduce the latest information processing technology. Professor Lei Heong Iok, President of MPI, Professor Zhong WeiHe, President of GDUFS and Mr. Huang Song, Chairman of the board of Global Tone Communication Technology Co., Ltd., officiated the contract signing ceremony. Also in attendance were Mr. Huang YouYi, former Deputy Director of China Foreign Languages Publishing Administration and Standing Vice President of TAC (Translations Association of China), Mr. Yu Yang, General Manager of GTC Technology Co. Ltd, Professor Yang Ke, Dean of Faculty of European Language and Cultures, as well as experts and scholars from GDUFS and MPI. The signing ceremony was followed by a seminar in which various issues such as the research direction of the CPE Translation Laboratory were discussed. 

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