MPU Hosts 29th International Conference on Cantonese

To promote academic exchange and cooperation between the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area and the international community, the Faculty of Languages and Translation of the Macao Polytechnic University and the Macao Cantonese Dialect Society co-hosted the 29th International Conference on Cantonese. The conference focused on the theory and application of Cantonese research in the era of artificial intelligence. This year's event brought together dozens of experts and scholars from the Chinese Mainland, Hong Kong, Macao, and Japan to explore new pathways and development directions for Cantonese research in the digital age. Since its inception in 1987, jointly initiated by the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong and The Chinese University of Hong Kong, the International Conference on Cantonese has become a significant academic event in the field of Chinese dialect research.

At the opening ceremony, Dr. Lei Ngan Lin, Vice Rector of the Macao Polytechnic University, delivered a speech reviewing the conference's nearly four-decade-long development and highlighting the university's achievements in integrating language and culture with artificial intelligence. Macao Polytechnic University has established a large-scale AI parallel corpus with tens of millions of entries for Chinese-Portuguese machine translation and developed a precise neural machine translation platform for the two languages. In the field of Cantonese speech research, the university has leveraged AI technology to create a personalized Cantonese speech recognition system, transforming research outcomes into practical applications. These accomplishments fully demonstrate the university's leading role in merging traditional language research with modern technological innovation.

Renowned Chinese dialectologist Zhan Bohui, a professor at Jinan University, expressed in his address that the Cantonese Conference has spanned over three decades since its first session, and it is particularly exciting to see its 29th installment held in Macao this year. He noted that Cantonese is the most widely circulated and influential Chinese dialect and thanked scholars for their persistent efforts in this field, wishing the conference a complete success.

The conference is held in rotation across locations, including the Chinese Mainland and Hong Kong. This marks the third time Macao Polytechnic University has hosted the event, reflecting the academic influence and organizational capability of its Faculty of Languages and Translation in Cantonese research and language technology. This year's conference featured multiple thematic sessions covering cutting-edge topics such as Cantonese teaching and testing, the application of Cantonese in experimental phonetics and speech therapy, the collation and study of Cantonese documents, and Cantonese geographical linguistics. Keynote speakers included renowned scholars such as Prof. Masayuki Yoshikawa from the University of Tokyo, Prof. Liu Xinzhong from Jinan University, and Dr. Zhang Ling from The Education University of Hong Kong, who delivered special reports on Japanese materials and early Cantonese research, the characteristics and acoustic patterns of Cantonese tones, and the use of AI technology in the inheritance of Cantonese singing, respectively. The conference not only provided a valuable platform for exchange within the Cantonese research community but also, against the backdrop of deep integration between AI and language science, opened new pathways for dialect preservation and research, highlighting the vibrant vitality and development potential of traditional language culture in the digital era.