UKCT launches Mass Translation Project

UKCT launches Mass Translation Project

UKCT has launched a new project combining AI with volunteer power in order to translate Chinese sources for use by policy-makers, academics, researchers and the general public.

The first two documents added are announcements by Tsinghua University and Nanjing University. The announcements detail the merging of the universities’ Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Committee offices with the general university administrative office.

This follows reports of a number of universities around the country enacting the same reform.

Universities have long been controlled by their resident CCP Committees in practice. In some cases examined by UKCT, CCP Committee offices and school offices or presidents’ offices have been merged for over a decade. However, the changes at certain universities (such as Nanjing and Tsinghua, two of China’s finest) underline the growing control of the CCP over all aspects of academic life and the general hardening of CCP authority under Xi Jinping.

Tsinghua and Nanjing universities have partnerships across the UK.

UKCT’s Mass Translation Project involves the use of machine translation tools, followed by review by at least two individuals fluent in both Mandarin and English. All the resulting translations include the original source Mandarin alongside an English translation, and can be accessed in UKCT’s digital library.