Although the number of applicants (730,000) has surpassed the required amount, more foreign language speakers are needed to offer volunteer services for the Beijing Olympic Games, according to the Office of the Volunteer Work Coordination Group for Beijing Olympic Games.

The office sincerely invites people of all circles who can communicate in any of the foreign languages chosen by BOCOG and meet the volunteer requirements to seize the opportunity to register as volunteers. The departments concerned will go on a new round of selection and testing process in mid December.

The Beijing Olympic Games are expected to provide services in 55 languages. They are English, French, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, Japanese, Portuguese, German, Korean, Italian, Greek, Polish, Hungarian, Czech, Romanian, Serbian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovak, Thai, Turkish, Persian, Danish, Lithuanian, Hebrew, Azerbaijani, Norwegian, Latvian, Armenian, Vietnamese, Mongolian, Slovenian, Hindi, Georgian, Macedonian, Indonesian, Amharic, Lao, Estonian, Albanian, Farsi, Icelandic, Pilipino, Cambodian, Burmese, Moldavian, Catalan, Luxemburgish, Bosnian, Dutch, Finnish, Swedish, Bulgarian, Malay and Urdu.

The teachers and students in Beijing's universities, including foreign students (teachers) can register at the youth league committee of their universities, while other people can register online at the website of any of Beijing's 18 districts or counties. For more information, please visit volunteers.beijing2008.cn, or call 12308/51601208. The address of Beijing Volunteers Association is Room 1501, Haidian Culture & Art Building, No.28-1, Zhongguancun Street, Haidian District, Beijing.

(BOCOG November 21, 2007)