First and foremost, excuse me if I mispronounce the Chinese names.

So to start with, your excellency Mr Wang Xiaoshu, Deputy Minister of Human Resources and Social Security Department,

Dear professor Hao Ping, president of the Beijing Foreign Studies University,

Professor Yang Xueyi, chairman of the BFSU Council,

Distinguished participants from overseas,

Distinguished participants from China,

Allow me to mention that in my lengthy keynote speech later on today, I will focus on the historical evolution of the UN language services in the 20th century and will try to give you some answers of the future in the 21st century.

Today we celebrate an anniversary of the UN sponsored Chinese interpretation and translation training program, a joint venture between the United Nations and China, which was launched 30 years ago. This program, alongside other UN sponsored training programs, including those in Moscow, Addis Ababa and Rabat, play an important role in the development of the professional language units within the international civil service and in the establishment of the language services provided by the UN as the golden standard of quality, efficiency and ability to meet various unique needs of multilingual inter-governmental communication.

Founded in 1979 as a joint project and based in the then Beijing Institute of Foreign Languages, now BFSU, the UN interpreters and translators training class, later called the UN interpreters and translator training program turned out over 300 first class interpreters and translators for the organization in its 14 years of existence. They included the first group of conference interpreters ever professionally trained and produced in China. Among the 50 Chinese interpreters now working in the UN system, 48 are graduates of the program, some having worked as long as 26 years.

Graduates from the program constitute a majority of translators and translation services in the UN system around the world. In addition, quite a few graduates served as top interpreters in the Chinese Foreign Ministry, concurrently working for Chinese leaders before joining the United Nations. Still others having worked at the UN as translators and interpreters returned to the foreign ministry and have since become deputy foreign ministers, assistant foreign ministers or ambassadors.

The BFSU Graduate School of Translation and Interpretation was established as a successor to the former UN training program based on the same premises in Beijing Foreign Studies University. It continued and developed the tradition of excellence established by its predecessor. And now after signing the Memorandum of Understanding with the UN last year, it joined other institutions in taking practical measures to address the succession planning needs of the UN language services which are faced with massive retirements of its language staff.

We are looking forward to a moment when the initial phase of signing of MOU covering all languages combinations and language professions will be completed. And we will move to the next stage at which all universities that we have signed a Memorandum of Understanding will start working together as a consortium, benefiting from each other's experience and training the UN language staff and achieving synergies. The BFSU graduate school will undoubtedly play an important role in this new system of ensuring training of candidates and lifelong learning of serving language staff.

Today while congratulating the school on its remarkable achievements in the past, I am looking forward with confidence to the future and see the school as one of the major pillars of cooperation framework we all are developing together now.

Thank you, the school and university, for what you have been doing for the international community and many happy returns of this anniversary.

Thanks.