AUPP students worked through the weekend for Microsoft’s Translator Hub Khmer in agreement  with Cambodia’s Ministry of Commerce. Students arrived on campus early in the morning and spent the entire day until the evening working on this project. Sitting in the computer lab and gazing at the screens, all the students seemed fully engaged in translating complicated English and Khmer business terms. Their goal is to go through and translate over 100,000 sentences and phrases in both languages as well as verify them for their accuracy. It was in August that the Ministry of Commerce and Microsoft South East Asia signed a memorandum of understanding to finalize this joint project. Since then, AUPP students have been actively involved with learning the Microsoft interface in addition to working with AUPP faculty and the Ministry of Commerce. In an interview with the Phnom Penh Post.

Commerce Minister Pan Sorasak said Translator-Hub Khmer, which will translate English to Khmer and vice-versa, would help overcome language barriers. “We give priority on translating terminology that is used in business activities”. This project alone is expected to take a year or more in order to develop a well refined database. While currently the Translator Hub is only focused on business terminology, other terminology specific sectors such as law, science and health would follow later.

“Our mission is to empower every person and organization to achieve more, and we believe that our collaboration with the Ministry of Commerce will strengthen ICT as pillar of Cambodia development and competitiveness” as was previously stated by Michelle Simmons, general manager of Southeast Asia New Markets at Microsoft Asia Pacific.

Empowering AUPP students is exactly what has been achieved. Our students have been given a great experience to work for a multi national company while at the same time working towards breaking down language barriers between Khmer and English.