The University of Macau (UM) held an opening ceremony for its library’s new Portuguese Corner on Friday. Alexis Tam, Secretary for Social Affairs and Culture, and Yonghua Song, rector of UM, attended the ceremony.
In his speech, Tam noted that the Portuguese language is becoming increasingly important, not only because it is an official language in Macau, but also because the central government has provided a lot of support to the region to develop itself into a platform for cultural exchange between China and Portuguese-speaking countries, on top of its current role as a service platform for business collaboration. The Secretary added that the demand for bilingual Chinese-Portuguese language professionals is expected to keep increasing and the training of bilingual professionals will therefore become a major responsibility of the local government.
Rector Song said that UM’s Department of Portuguese is undergoing a series of reforms such as optimization of the undergraduate curriculum, providing scholarships for Portuguese language students. He also mentioned other projects that reflect UM’s effort to promote Portuguese language education and research, including the Chinese-Portuguese Bilingual Teaching and Training Centre, which was established a year ago; the Chinese-Portuguese Literary Translation Award, which was jointly launched by UM and the Macau Foundation last year; and the most recent one, the Portuguese Corner, jointly established by the UM library and the Department of Portuguese, for the purpose of making full use of UM’s learning environment and increasing linguistic and cultural exchange with Portuguese-speaking countries.
The Portuguese Corner is located on the second floor of the UM library. In addition to providing information about Portuguese culture, the corner will host talks and exhibitions on a regular basis. There is also an audiovisual room and a study room that serves as a learning commons for Portuguese studies, teaching, and research, and it supports the work of an alliance dedicated to the training of bilingual language professionals.
Rectors’ summit held at USJ
OVER THE weekend, the University of Saint Joseph (USJ) was the stage of the “1st Edition of the Forum of the Rectors of Higher Education Institutions of China and of the Portuguese-speaking Countries.” The first edition of the Forum addressed several topics of interest of both parties including “Creative Industries and Cultural Inclusion,” and “Harmony without Uniformity – Cultural Dialogue and Conflict Resolution”. The Rectors’ Summit focused specifically on joint initiatives of networking, research and scientific and technological innovation between the different institutions, also discussing issues such as scholarships and staff and students’ mobility among higher education institutions in the space of the Greater Bay Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Area and the Portuguese-speaking countries. A joint declaration of cooperation with Macau’s higher education institutions was also signed.
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