A Brilliant Interpreting Contest with Contestants from Four Schools of GDUFS

Recently, the finals of the 5th “SITS CUP” Interpreting Contest was held in the Lecture Hall of Teaching Building Six on the North Campus of GDUFS. Facing the entire campus, this contest attracted students from four schools, such as School of Interpreting and Translation Studies, Faculty of English Language and Culture, School of English for International Business and the School of English and Education. After the preliminary contest, 18 contestants stood out and presented a brilliant audio-visual feast to the audience.

The scene of the contesttest were CHEN Feng, Senior Interpreter of the UN and PING Hong, ZHAN Cheng, QIAN Fang and YU Yi, teachers from SITS. The guests who attended this contest were LIU Zhijun, Secretary of the Party Committee of SITS, MO Aiping, Director of the Center for Translation Studies, LI Ming, Vice-Dean of SITS, Vice-Secretary of the Party Committee of SITS, WU Di, Secretary of the Center for Translation Studies and WANG Bin, Counselor of SITS.

Address by ZHAO Junfeng, Dean of SITS

Before the contest, ZHAO Junfeng, Dean of SITS delivered a speech, pointing out that SITS has always strived to provide a sound academic environment for students and build an excellent atmosphere of learning. As one of the branding activities of SITS, academic contests such as the ”SITS CUP” have provided a great platform for students to exercise their skills and show themselves.

Everybody was showing their special talents in this fierce competition

The contest was divided into two sessions; first, each contestant should interpret from English to Chinese by turns according to the speech titled; “McDonald's fast-food culture is against the spirit of share in Catholicism”, among the 8 contestants who were judged superior could be promoted to the second session of Dialogue Interpreting.

The Dialogue Interpreting had invited four distinguished guests, who were XING Jie, teacher from SITS, LI Jiayong, teacher from the School of Legal Studies, Stephen Rake and Fred Parker, both foreign teachers. The contestants debate centered on two topics: favorable circumstances vs. adverse situations in life and who is charged for the generation gap.

During the debate, XING Jie demonstrated the significance of adverse situation by quoting the story of Pilgrimage to the West and the famous remark of “When Heaven is about to place a great responsibility on a great man, it always first frustrates his spirit and will, exhausts his muscles and bones, and exposes him to starvation and poverty...” from Mencius, which brought the house down. In this whole session, the ideology of both Chinese and English had collided with each other, which was evidently proved by the sharp words and the sparkling ideas from the four debaters. Under such circumstances, contestants’ capabilities in interpreting were really challenged.

Great ideas were sparked in dialogue interpreting

After these two sessions, CHEN Feng commented on the contest. First, he affirmed the splendid performance of each contestant, particularly the performance in dialogue interpreting, which “the audience enjoyed ”. Then he pointed out the various deficiencies of contestants’ performance, such as failure to interpret materials correctly because of wrong comprehension; not-so-good performance from lower psychological quality; two much gesture, which seemed to be a reversal of the order of host and guest. In light of the long and arduous path of interpreting, he wished all of the students could enjoy the process of interpreting and translation.

CHEN Feng commenting on the contest

The first prize winners were HE Ting, WU Xinyue and YANG Bo, all of whom will be promoted to the quarter-finals of the Guangdong and Hainan Competition Zone of the Fourth National Interpreting Contest, allowing contestants to step onto a broader platform.

Teachers and contestants