IN April, nine candidates for the role of the United Nation’s next secretary-general presented their views on an array of global issues to members at the organization’s headquarter in New York. Although few realized it at the time, a group of students in Shanghai made their own small contribution to the historic proceedings.

These students, studying with the Graduate Institute of Interpretation and Translation at Shanghai International Studies University (SISU), translated the English text of each candidate’s manifesto into Chinese. These materials were disseminated during three days of online video conferences between the candidates and UN diplomats.

Remarkably, the 18 SISU students who worked on this project were unaware of the gravity of their task when they received an urgent translation request from the UN’s Department of Public Information (DPI) on April 12. SISU has a long standing relationship with the UN, and its students frequently cooperate with the organization on various translation and interpretation assignments.

Last year, students and teachers from the institute translated the document “Basic Facts about the United Nations 2014” into Chinese. Last September, a team at the institution was also established to regularly translate materials from the DPI, including publications like the UN Chronicle and UN Weekly.

Gu Qianwen and Fan Ying, both second-year students at the institute and program managers of the aforementioned team, assumed the request they received on April 12 was just another routine assignment. The request came in an email from the DPI, which also included eight attached documents and instructions to submit translations over a three-day period.

“We’ve done urgent tasks before that needed to be completed on the same day, but most of these had about 500 words,” Gu told Shanghai Daily. “So we thought this would be no big deal for us.”

These documents, however, contained about 2,000 words each. Fan asked for a postponement, but was told to translate as much as possible that first day.

Under pressure

With the clock ticking, she sent out an urgent message to the rest of the team. But with most of its members in class that morning, it wasn’t until afternoon that the team finally assembled and began divvying up the workload. Gu and Fan each offered to translate 1,000 words on the first day. Several first-year students also stepped forward to contribute.

“These first-year students had never taken part in any real translation tasks before,” said Gu. “They had practiced with materials translated by second-year students, but their translation had never been submitted to the UN. But we were really short of hands that time.”

The group’s normal workflow also had to adapt. Under normal circumstances, each translation is reviewed by multiple readers. Drafts are then given a final read by program-supervisor, professor Huang Xie’an. As they scrambled to finish, the students had to proceed without the help of Huang.

“I was so anxious. I didn’t want to sacrifice quality, as tasks assigned by the UN are serious documents. I tried my best to concentrate and finished shortly after 6pm, with sweaty palms,” Gu recalled.

By 8pm, only one of three files due that day had been submitted. The other two were still in the process of cross-reading. Regardless, the UN instructed the students to submit whatever they had completed, as the materials were needed immediately for an imminent live broadcast.

The group turned over its work 20 minutes before live interviews were scheduled to begin.

“Though the documents were submitted, we didn’t feel relaxed at all,” Gu said. “On the contrary, we were in low spirits as we failed to finish on time. We were also worried about quality, as we had worked so hastily.”

In fact, Gu said she was emailing UN officials until the very last minute with concerns and remarks about specific phrases.

Even then, they had no idea how important the files were and why the task was so urgent.

But when the UN released a post titled “Who Will be the Next UN Secretary-General?” on its official Weibo account, Gu knew this was a historic moment.

“We did not pay much attention to the elections previously, thinking it was something far remote from us,” she said. “But when the first post was released, we realized immediately that it contained part of the manifesto of Montenegro’s foreign minister Igor Lukšić. It was exactly the same as I had translated,” she said. “I was so excited and proud that the UN trusted us so much to translate such important documents.”

Realizing the importance of the group’s work, Gu asked her teammates to start work on the following days’ work as soon as possible.

“We had some small setbacks, as the new files had a problem when transferred from PDF to a Word document, and one student sent her contribution to the wrong email address ... on the third day,” said Gu. “But fortunately, we submitted all the files in time. We were glad to find that our translations remained largely unchanged.”

Real-world assignments

After these three tense days, the students said their hard work was all worthwhile. They also thanked the UN for giving them the opportunity to sharpen their skills in such a tense situation.

Gu also said her cooperation with the UN DPI has made her a more capable team manager. Learning how to lead isn’t something she can learn in class, she explained, but it’s a skill she hopes will serve her well after graduation.

Professor Huang also sees positive results, particularly in translation speed and accuracy among students involved in the UN program.

“UN documents are not literature works. The real requirement is precision,” Huang said. “And with the workload of the UN program, they have to work every week. This means they get a lot of practices.”

The institute started cooperating with the UN shortly after its establishment in 2003, when it signed a cooperation agreement with the UN office in Geneva to jointly cultivate professional translators. Over the following years, their cooperation expanded to UN offices in Nairobi and Vienna, as well as its headquarter in New York. The school sends interns to these offices every year. Some of its graduates have even landed jobs with the UN.

Gu believes the UN is satisfied with the performance of students from SISU, especially since the organization continues to send her team important translation assignments.

“We will continue to work hard in the future and make the cooperation between the UN and our school more solid,” she concluded.