News and Kudos

The 10th Cross-Strait Interpreting Contest Concludes Successfully at PolyU

The 10th Cross-Strait Interpreting Contest Grand Final was successfully held at the Chiang Chen Studio Theatre of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU). This prestigious event brought together 30 outstanding contestants from renowned universities across Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, the United States, and Singapore. After three intense rounds of competition, HUNG Chien-hui from National Taiwan Normal University emerged as the champion, winning the Grand Prize.   The Cross-Strait Interpreting Contest, initiated and organised by Xiamen University, is a highly influential academic competition in higher education across the Cross-Strait region. The contest has been held ten times, with over 2,000 university entries, covering more than 80% of top-tier universities in the Chinese mainland and all universities offering interpreting studies in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau.   This year’s grand final consisted of three segments, centred around the theme “Digital Society”. It aimed to assess contestants' bilingual proficiency, interpreting skills, and cultural communication abilities in diverse contexts and scenarios. The top 10 contestants from the first two rounds advanced to the third segment, dialogue interpreting. In the segment, contestants and AI translated bidirectional dialogues between Chinese and English speakers. The segment was designed to test whether contestants can deal with cultural differences and challenges raised by speakers, be sensitive to linguistic nuances, and have on-the-spot adaptability and professional competence.   Prof. SIOK Wai-ting, Head of PolyU’s Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies (CBS), delivered the welcome speech. She remarked that the contest not only advanced interpreting education but also marked another milestone in cooperation among the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan. She emphasised the growing importance of interpreters as cultural ambassadors who build meaningful bridges between different nations and regions amid exchanges in trade, technology, and tourism.   In the opening speech, Prof. CHEN Jing, Dean of the College of Foreign Languages and Cultures at Xiamen University, highlighted the contest's greatest value as a platform for students passionate about interpreting to gather, exchange, and learn from each other, helping them become professionals and leaders in the field.   Prof. LI Dechao, Associate Head of CBS, delivered the closing remarks, sharing his reflections on the contest. He acknowledged that despite rapid AI advancements, interpreting still requires human warmth and emotion, which machines cannot fully replicate. Furthermore, he noted that the integration of interpreting skills with fields like business has become a new trend for future development. Universities like PolyU are actively promoting the integration of interpreting education with AI to seek breakthroughs.   Another highlight of this year's Cross-Strait Interpreting Contest was the seminar held the following day at PolyU. Scholars and professionals in related fields attended the seminar, focusing on the future of the language service industry in the AI era, promoting sustainable and high-quality development of interpreting and other language services.

PolyU Partners with Springer Nature on AI-Humanities Book Series

The Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies (CBS) at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) has established a significant collaboration with Springer Nature, launching two academic book series. The book-signing ceremony, held on campus on 12 May 2025, introduced the series “Generative AI and the Humanities” and its open-access companion series, “SpringerBriefs in AI-Enhanced Language Research”. The event featured remarks from distinguished speakers including Prof. LI Ping, Dean of PolyU’s Faculty of Humanities and Sin Wai Kin Foundation Professor in Humanities and Technology, alongside Ms. Myriam POORT, Vice President of Humanities and Social Science Publishing at Springer Nature. The new series will be edited by CBS’s Prof. LI Dechao and Dr. LIU Kanglong, with plans to publish at least three volumes annually through 2026. This strategic partnership leverages PolyU’s strength in linguistics, which was recently ranked 51st globally in the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2025. The day’s programme also included a symposium featuring Prof. CAI Zhenguang, Professor in the Department of Linguistics and Modern Languages at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, as the keynote speaker. This was followed by an author workshop, gathering scholars to explore the evolving relationship between technology and humanities research.

Silver Tsunami Challenges Inspire a Breakthrough in Speech Therapy

Hong Kong’s rapidly ageing population presents pressing healthcare challenges, with innovative solutions becoming critical to safeguard quality of life for seniors. Among these challenges, dysphagia, a swallowing disorder affecting many seniors, often goes undiagnosed until more health complications arise.  Pioneering a groundbreaking solution is Professor Elaine KWONG Yee-lan, Associate Professor of Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies (CBS) and Associate Director of the Research Institute for Smart Ageing of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University.   Prof. Kwong’s research integrates portable ultrasound devices and AI algorithms, enabling community and at-home swallowing assessments. To improve diagnostic accuracy and efficiency, this breakthrough reduces dependence on invasive and hospital-based imaging like X-ray scanning and endoscopy.  To date, over 450 speech therapists and healthcare professionals have been trained in this method, and the technology is already being adopted in clinical practice, enhancing both patient care and professional expertise in the healthcare sector.   As Hong Kong braces for its silver tsunami, Prof. Kwong's research exemplifies how technological advancements contributes to medical innovation, paving the way to address societal needs of the ageing population in Hong Kong and beyond.  For details, please refer to the original media coverage here on Sing Tao Headline. 

Prof. Emmanuele Chersoni and Team Win Best Theme Paper Award at NAACL 2025

Prof. Emmanuele CHERSONI, Assistant Professor of PolyU’s Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies (CBS), and a team of international researchers, including our alumnus Dr. Enrico SANTUS, have been honoured with the Best Theme Paper Award at 2025 Annual Conference of the NAACL (Nations of the Americas Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics), a leading event in natural language processing and computational linguistics. This outstanding achievement stems from their collaborative paper, “WORLDCUISINES: A Massive-Scale Benchmark for Multilingual and Multicultural Visual Question Answering on Global Cuisines.” The WORLDCUISINES Project has developed a large-scale dataset comprising images and multilingual Q&A pairs to evaluate how large language models (LLMs) recognise and describe culinary dishes from 30 different languages and cultures. Prof. Chersoni and Dr. Santus contributed their expertise to the Italian cuisine section of the dataset.

Prof. Ke Sihui Honoured with the ARWA Mid-Career Award and a PhD Student Wins the Top Student Researcher Award at ARWA 2025

Prof. Ke Sihui, Associate Professor in the Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies, has been awarded the ARWA (Association for Reading and Writing in Asia) Mid-Career Award. This prestigious accolade recognizes mid-career researchers with outstanding contributions to literacy acquisition, particularly in Asia or cross-linguistic/cross-scriptal contexts. Established in 2016, ARWA supports research in literacy development, impairment, and expert linguistic processing through print in Asia. Prof. Ke's significant contributions make her a deserving recipient. Additionally, Miss Xu Xintong, a PhD student under Prof. Ke's supervision, won the Top Student Researcher award at the 9th Annual ARWA Conference in the Philippines. This award honors three outstanding student researchers in Asia who present their work at the conference. Miss Xu received a cash prize and certificate and represented the Chinese-speaking region. Her presentation on reading and writing development highlighted her significant contributions to the field.

CBS MATI and BALT students secured second and third prizes in the 2024 National Translation Competition

Congratulations to CBS students for clinching second and third prizes, respectively, in the University A category of the prestigious 2024 National News Translation and Editing Competition. The competition was held in December 2024 and introduced innovative changes in its format and content selection. Participants were required not only to accurately understand and translate the original text but also to refine it into a well-structured news article. As a result, the competition significantly enhanced participants' foreign language proficiency and international communication skills.

Prof. Siok Wai Ting Received RGC Collaborative Research Fund for 2024/25

Under the leadership of Prof. Siok Wai Ting, the Head of the Department of Language Science and Technology, a collaborative project titled “Integrating Machine Learning, Behavioral Analysis and Multimodal Neuroimaging Techniques to Investigate the Comorbidity of Specific Learning Disabilities in Hong Kong” has successfully secured HK$4 million from the Collaborative Research Fund (CRF) of the Research Grants Council (RGC) for 2024/25. This initiative involves collaboration with researchers from both the University of Hong Kong (HKU) and the Education University of Hong Kong (EdUHK). The CRF is designed to promote multi-investigator and multi-disciplinary projects in order to encourage more research groups to engage in creative and high-quality cross-disciplinary and cross-institutional projects.

CBS Ph.D. Graduate Awarded Outstanding Thesis Award from the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong

Ms. Deran Kong, a Ph.D. graduate from CBS, has been awarded the Outstanding Thesis Award for 2024 by the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong (LSHK). Under the guidance of chief supervisor Dr. Sun-A Kim and co-supervisor Dr. Yu-Yin Hsu from CBS, Deran's thesis, titled “Subject-object asymmetry in native and non-native speakers’ comprehension and production of Mandarin relative clauses,” showcases the high-quality research nurtured within our department.

CBS MATI student secured the Bronze Prize at the 2024 National Competition of English Translation, FLTRP Guocai Cup: Understanding Contemporary China

Congratulations to Ms. LEI Shulan, a current MATI student, for winning the Bronze Prize in the 2024 National Competition of English Translation, FLTRP Guocai Cup: Understanding Contemporary China! Ms. LEI competed against talented contestants from across mainland China and Hong Kong in the final round, showcasing her impressive skills and dedication. Congratulations on this outstanding achievement!

Honourable Mention for Best Paper Award at BlackboxNLP 2024

Dr. Emmanuele Chersoni, Assistant Professor in the Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies (CBS), collaborated with fellow scholars to receive the "Best Paper Award" at the prestigious BlackboxNLP Conference in Miami. This recognition is for their exceptional paper titled "Log Probabilities Are a Reliable Estimate of Semantic Plausibility in Base and Instruction-Tuned Language Models."