The 2nd China International Import Expo (CIIE) has increased the number of translators and translation devices inside and outside the Shanghai venue to ensure smooth communication between participants from many nations.
The six-day event, running from Nov. 5 to 10, has attracted more than 3,000 companies from over 150 countries and regions to showcase their products or services to seek a share of China's huge market.
According to the organizing committee, a total of 1,061 translators have been signed up to provide language services for foreign exhibitors, the number being 20% up from last year. Besides, 180 more will be on stand-by at different sites around the event venues to provide translation services in the six official languages of the United Nations - Chinese, English, French, Russian, Arabic, and Spanish - as well as Korean.
The number of translation devices at the venues has also been increased to 83, compared to last year's 32, providing consecutive translation, information and direction services in 12 languages, to complement human translation.
According to Shanghai Municipal Administration of Culture and Tourism, portable smart translation devices have also been provided to over 1,000 hotels housing CIIE participants, tourism information centers and famous scenic spots to further promote good communications.
The device offered by China's AI company iFlytek enables real-time audio or text translation between Chinese and over 50 other languages, and can even recognize some differing Chinese accents or dialects.