Students pillar up successful tournament at Beijing taekwond

Over 700 volunteer students from universities in Beijing functioned strongly for successful organization at the World Taekwondo Championships being staged here on May 18-22.

With many athletes coming from non-English speaking countries, students majoring in languages other than English are providing valuable services to organizers and athletes.

Students fluent in Spanish, Korean, Persian and Cuban languages are helping translate at the news conferences.

Not only on news conference, these students also serve as guide for athletes and spectators in and out matches.

"The volunteers should be responsible, hard working and very good at speaking foreign languages," said Li Shuang, head of the Press and Publicity Department.

"Students from University of Petroleum in particular are doing extremely well. They've been offering a lot of help for both the committee and the athletes."

Foreign journalists and athletes are also impressed with the volunteers' services.

"The services provided have been perfect. Everything has gone well. Just now, I had some problems with registering, but the media center volunteer gave me a lot of help," said Rodriguez Liem, a journalist from Sweden.

Araz Nabizadeh, a reporter for Feightermag in Sweden, said: "From what I have seen so far, everything has been professional. During the competition, I hope that I can get more experience in my profession. Even in the excitement of the fight, I have to remain a journalist and write a good article."