From July 11-16, the first MTI Teaching Forum combined with teacher training workshop was held in DUFL. The forum was hosted by the Liaoning Education Department and co-organized by the post-graduate department and SATI of DUFL.

Keynote speakers at the forum were Mr. Li Zhengren, Chief Interpreter and Director of the Interpretation Division of the United Nations Office at Geneva, Mr. Chen Mingming, former Director of the Translation Department of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and former Ambassador to New Zealand and Sweden, Professor Chai Mingjiong, the Honorary Dean of Graduate Institute of Interpretation and Translation of SISU, Professor Yang Junfeng, former Vice President of DUFL, and Professor Ge Shili, Vice Director of Foreign Language Research and Language Services Collaborative Innovation Center of Guangdong University of Foreign Studies.

Vice President Jiang Fengchun, who declared the forum open, reviewed the development of MTI education at DUFL and listed the achievements in MTI students’ cultivation, curriculum framework and teacher training. In particular, he commended the experiences and achievements through the establishment of practice fields with institutes at national level and language service enterprises. He also expressed the willingness to share the high-qualified educational resources with other colleges and universities in Liaoning province. Yang Yanjin, Director of Academic Degree Office of Liaoning, said that there are 12 colleges and universities for MTI education in Liaoning with an annual enrollment of 650 students. The MTI education is playing an important role in the Belt and Road construction and regional social and economic development. He hoped that colleges and universities would further promote the MTI teaching staff construction, develop the student’s cultivation with the collaboration with enterprises and push forward a comprehensive reform in MTI education in order to better the quality of MTI education and contribute more to the rejuvenation of Liaoning.

In the afternoon, the participants joined two parallel sessions, discussing hot topics as well as cutting-edge research questions in MTI education. In the closing ceremony, the hosts of the two parallel sessions gave summaries.

Following the forum and the parallel sessions, MTI teacher training continued for the next 5 days. The training curriculum included memory training in interpreting, consecutive interpreting, architecture translation, translation technology application. For this special training, the organizers invited experienced professionals from the IT enterprises as well as professors and researchers of DUFL.

This forum and workshop is a significant activity under the framework of culturalexchange and university-enterprise collaboration in language services so as to renovate the model for such collaboration, and better serve the MTI education reform.