Soochow University—located in Suzhou, East China—has translated eight Chinese editions of the multilingual?Yearbook Express?for the Yearbook Unit of the United Nations Department of Public Information since 2014, with more to come. This ongoing collaborative work, which the University has incorporated into an innovative curriculum for its Master of Translation and Interpreting (MTI) students, represents a substantial contribution to making the?Yearbook of the United Nations?more accessible to the people served by the United Nations and to ensuring that the Organization and its goals and actions are understood by the widest possible public.??
The Yearbook Express, based on editions in the Yearbook collection, features the chapter introductions of recent Yearbooks covering UN activities and concerns, along with the report of the Secretary-General on the work of the Organization, in all six UN official languages. The Express provides speakers of all UN official languages (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish) with summarized Yearbook content.?
To better facilitate this translation project for the United Nations, Soochow University has been offering a curriculum in the translation of UN materials for its MTI students, who receive hands-on experience using actual UN materials and standards, since its School of Foreign Languages started working with the UN in 2011. In addition, the University has set up a terminology bank of their own, which includes all the special terms that they have encountered and whose translations have been aligned with the terminology database on the UN website.?
The University has adopted a 3-step procedure, developed by Professor Wang Hong, for the translation work. First, the students read relevant materials and conduct an on-line search of terms before they translate the Yearbook Express into Chinese. Next, four professors of translation revise and comment on the students’ translation. At the third stage, Instructor Ms. Zeng Yan reviews and finalizes the translation, as a whole, for accuracy, clarity, conciseness and consistency before submitting it to the UN Yearbook Unit.?
In the translation process, the biggest challenge, according to Ms. Zeng Yan, is the on-line search and translation of the special, fixed terms and phrases. In order to achieve consistency in UN document translation, the students need to repeatedly check the translation of a term in the UN Official Document System (ODS)—an online database of UN documents, or the UN Terminology Database (UNTERM)—a multilingual terminology database, to see whether it matches the official translation version of the UN.??
The students feel that the translation project has helped them learn some translation skills. Some students comment that the Yearbook Express translation is a combination of independent thinking and group collaboration, from which they grow a sense of responsibility and a sense of achievement. Others think that the translation project is a great opportunity to understand the world situation, broaden their horizon and increase their awareness of and concern for international affairs. They are very proud of supporting the work of the United Nations.?
Soochow University has been a member of the United Nations Academic Impact (UNAI) since 2015, shouldering its share of intellectual social responsibility and making its contribution to the realization of the purposes and mandate of the United Nations via the collaborative platform of UNAI.?
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