The 1^st World Chinese-Portuguese Translation Competition (WCPTC), co-hosted by the Tertiary Education Services Office of the Macao SAR Government and the Macao Polytechnic Institute in 2017, was an unprecedented event and evoked a strong response. Macao, the Mainland China and Lusophone countries with a total of more than 80 teams, composed of hundreds of teachers and students, were actively engaged and achieved outstanding results. WCPTC played an important role in promoting the Chinese-Portuguese translation education and arousing the interests of students of higher education institutions in Macao and the Mainland China in learning Portuguese and Lusophone students in learning Chinese. To consolidate this achievement and continuously promote the Chinese-Portuguese translation education, the Tertiary Education Services Office and the Macao Polytechnic Institute decided to jointly organise the 2nd World Chinese-Portuguese Translation Competition in 2018, with the Secretary for Social Affairs and Culture of the Macao SAR Government and the Language Big Data Alliance (LBDA) as the supporting units.

The 2^nd World Chinese-Portuguese Translation Competition press conference was held on 6 December at 16:00 at MPI. The press conference was officiated by Mr. Sou Chio Fai, Director of the Tertiary Education Services Office, Professor Lei Heong Iok, President of MPI, Professor Marcus Im, Vice President of MPI and Professor Li Changsen, team leader of the academic group of the competition, to introduce the regulations and details of the competition. Director Sou pointed out that as Macao plays a very important role for training of Chinese-Portuguese bilingual talents, the Tertiary Education Services Office offers full support to Macao higher education institutions to promote Chinese-Portuguese speaking talents. Last year, with the initiative proposed by MPI, the Tertiary Education Services Office and MPI joined hands in organising the 1st Chinese-Portuguese World Translation Competition and it was very successful. Mr. Sou hopes to attract more teams from all over the world to participate in the 2^nd World Chinese-Portuguese Translation Competition. President Lei, who wishes for the full success of the competition, also affirms that MPI has always been dedicated to the teaching of Chinese-Portuguese translation. The purpose of organising this competition is to strengthen the exchange of Chinese-Portuguese translation techniques among students of higher education institutions from all over the world, to nurture professional translators of Chinese-Portuguese, and to contribute to the development and promotion of Portuguese teaching and learning, taking advantage of MPI’s long history of Chinese-Portuguese translation.

The World Chinese-Portuguese Translation Competition welcomes students of higher education institutions from Macao, the Mainland China and Lusophone countries, universities affiliated with the LBDA and countries/regions that offer Chinese-Portuguese translation or related degree programmes to join the competition. Each team is composed of two to three students and each team can have one coach; the students and coach of the team should be from the same higher education institution. 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, starting from the following day after the source texts are delivered by email. The team should translate at least 5,000 sentences, but no more than 10,000 sentences. Each competing team needs to complete the registration form on the website of the competition before 5 pm on 31 January 2018. The organiser will confirm the receipt of the form by email.

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. The first prize team will receive a cash award of MOP140,000; the second prize team will receive a cash award of MOP105,000 and the third prize team will receive a cash award of MOP70,000. Teams with outstanding performance awards will receive a cash award of MOP25,000. In order to encourage students from Macao higher education institutions to participate, all local teams are automatically eligible to compete for the “Special Awards for Teams of Macao Higher Education Institutions”. The first prize team from among the local teams competing for these “Special Awards” will receive a cash award of MOP68,000; the second prize team will receive a cash award of MOP35,000. For details of the competition, please visit the official website www.ipm.edu.mo/WCPTC.