leven Serbian major students in Shanghai International Studies University (SISU), made a video to send their best wishes for Serbia. The official Weibo of Embassy of the Republic of Serbia in the People’s Republic of China (@SerbianEmbassy) reposted the video and expressed their gratitude.

The purpose of the video was to get more people to know Serbia and cheer for the Serbian people. The video has now been watched over 900,000 times and generated some 2,000 comments.

Ema, lecturer at School of Russian and Eurasian Studies, supported the making of the video. A Serbian native, she joined the school after finishing her postgraduate studies in interpreting at Graduate Institute of Interpretation and Translation, SISU. Emma commented that the friendship between two countries would expand cultural exchanges and serve as a momentum for students to make progress.

Previously, Ema is already known for her innovative teaching. Paying equal attention to the training of pronunciation and grammar, she organizes her materials in ways that her students find especially appealing, which has led to the remarkable learning outcomes. The fluency of the students’ Serbian, as displayed in the video, is just one example.

As translation software becomes more and more popular today, more questions are raised about the meaning of taking language or translation as a major. One of the comments on the video has provided an answer: To learn a language is to take off one more brick off the high wall between cultures. As Zhou Lifan, one of the contributors to the video, said, “the core of our learning is not the language itself, but the national conditions, the history and the culture of the people speaking the language. Our ultimate goal is to build bridges between our motherland and other countries.”

At the end of the video, the SISUers read together in Serbian: Ми верујемо у Вас и молимо Вас да и ви верујете у нас! Only sincerity breaks hypocrisy. Only truth defeats rumors!

For more information on the Serbian culture and news about the pandemic in Serbia, please follow the SISUers on Weibo @想去塞国看星星 (@wish to appreciate stars in Serbia).

This article is translated by Zhaoyu ZHANG and Yang BAI, and proofed by Qinyu Chen, members of the Translation Association of the School of English Studies (SESTA) at Shanghai International Studies University. For use of the content, please contact: ses_translators@163.com.