Dec. 29 - On the morning of Dec. 27th, the first "Higher Education Press Cup" National English Interpretation Competition Finals was held in the No.6 Teaching Building Auditorium. It was sponsored by Advanced Education Press and GDUFS, as well as Tencent Education and Pioneer Park Creative Expo Language Culture Exchange Center. Twenty one students from the best of the best in seven competition areas across China gathered at GDUFS and staged a brilliant final showdown.

At the beginning of the competition, Vice Secretary of Party Committee, Xu Guobin, delivered a welcome address talking about how GDUFS has matured and expanded its interpreting and translation expertise.

After the welcome address, the fierce competition began with a round of English - Chinese consecutive interpreting. The audio clips used were from speeches made at the Copenhagen conference on climate change and Obama's speeches, concerning food security, environmental protection and economy.

Through this round, contestants displayed a nice mixture of confidence, rapid intellect and eloquence.  After this round, the top fifteen contestants proceeded to the second round: Chinese - English consecutive interpreting. This section required a good command of English expressions, language structure and terminology. In the final section, the eight remaining contestants demonstrated the art and beauty of interpreting in dialogue interpreting. Mr. Peter Freyberg, Mr. Rupert Nigam, Dr. Wei Huibin and Professor Zhang Ning had a heated discussion over these latest topics: "Is Chinese real estate industry in boom or merely bubble economy?" and "Are we ready for waste separation and recovery?" The valuable topics, Chinese poems and idioms, lively atmosphere and vivid interpreting made this section the most exciting to watch.

After three rounds of fierce competition, Gao Jie from China Foreign Affairs University won the big prize, while Hong Lei and Tang Yu from GDUFS placed second and the third respectively.

In a brief interview after the first round, Zhang Jie, a competitor from University of International Business and Economics, said that taking part in this first-ever National English Interpretation Competition will be an experience that she remembers forever. Zhang was satisfied with her performance in this section. Majoring in interpreting and translation, she is gifted at being able to master everyday news as well as interpreting skills, thus the materials given during the competition did not strike her as odd. It proved that Zhang was an excellent competitor, and this is why she carried home second prize.

One of the judges, Guan Zhilin, a professor from Sun Yat-Sen University, gave her comments at the end. She stated that she was absolutely satisfied with the first-ever National English Interpreting Competition held at GDUFS. For the competitors, she pointed put out that accuracy was a point that they should all pay attention to. "Details determine the success of the battle." In terms of the layout of the stage in the competition, Professor Guan hoped that a more authentic scene can be prepared, so that the competitors could get a sense of on-the-spot interpreting. 

The first ever National English Interpreting Competition has come to an end, but we eagerly await next year’s competition.