On 23rd October 2015, at the Hilton in Manchester, UKTI and the Bank of China hosted one of the UK’s largest business matchmaking events offering UK and Chinese SMEs an opportunity to explore potential partnerships. Over 100 Chinese SMEs met face-to-face with a wide range of UK businesses around 100 tables, each with a Mandarin<>English interpreter to facilitate discussion.
The only interpreting provider selected for the event, Lifeline sourced no less than 79 professional and experienced Mandarin interpreters from all over the UK and Northern Europe to provide both simultaneous interpreting for the opening addresses and face-to-face (“F2F”) interpreting for the important matchmaking discussions.
Having worked intensively for 3 weeks with Bank of China to ensure everything was in place (including personalised briefing notes and a bilingual name badge for each interpreter), our Operations Manager Jenny Bryce also spent the day at the event to ensure all went well, registering and briefing each interpreter on arrival and checking them off at the end. “I counted all our interpreters out, and I counted them all back in again” she grinned.
Meriting very special mention is Jenny Hanley, a young graduate linguist spending a few months with us as an intern before heading off at New Year to join the circus (no, she really is – she’s a skilled juggler!) Jenny H spent literally days on the phone, tracking down and arranging interpreters and hotels. She says “When you’re used to juggling knives and flaming rings, a few interpreters comes easy!” Thanks to both Jennys for all their hard work.
We’d also like to thank UKTI and Bank of China for this exciting project, and look forward to working with both more over coming years.
More information is at https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-china-business-matchmaking-event-builds-connections-in-china
