Shen Xiaoming, secretary of the CPC Hunan Provincial Committee, announced the opening of the exhibition hall. Ren Youqun, member of the CPC Leading Group and vice minister of the Ministry of Education, and Tang Wei, member of the CPC Leading Group and deputy director of the National Cultural Heritage Administration, addressed the ceremony.

 
Dr. Khaled El-Enany, director-general of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), sent a congratulatory letter to the event.

Leaders and guests visit the special exhibition "The Endless River of Language" on August 24.

The exhibition hall, based upon the landmark outcomes of the project led by the Ministry of Education and the National Language Commission, brings together linguistic data on Chinese dialects, minority languages, and cultural expressions from across China. Using digital displays as its primary medium, the hall showcases over 30 language-related cultural relics from museums nationwide, creating a space combining immersion, integration, and experience for language and culture, and marking a transition of language resource protection from a "database" to a "living display."

The opening ceremony.

At the ceremony, the National Language Technology Empowerment Alliance for Key Fields was officially established, jointly initiated by a number of higher educational institutions, research institutions, and enterprises, including Donghua University, Peking University, Tongji University, Beijing Language and Culture University, Hunan Normal University, the National Library of China, the Hunan Museum, and Pengcheng Laboratory. The alliance will focus on leveraging language technology in key national areas, including education quality and efficiency, technological innovation, cultural inheritance and development, industrial upgrading, and social governance. It aims to drive the integration and innovation of language and AI, and speed up the application of research outcomes. Also released at the event was the Changsha Initiative on Empowering the Integration of Culture and Technology Through Language Resources, which calls for joint efforts in the scientific protection, development and application, and service empowerment of language resources, to ensure that languages and scripts can remain vibrant and enduring in the digital age.

Provincial leaders Liu Hongbing, Wang Junshou, and Liu Yang were present at the ceremony.

 
After the opening ceremony, the participants visited the exhibition and the special exhibition "The Endless River of Language."

This article is from Hunan Provincial Government. www.enghunan.gov.cn.

Translator: Pang Yuehui

Chinese source: hunan.gov.cn