A total of 32,164 examinees, a record high, from east China's Shanghai Municipality and four other cities from the Yangtze River Delta sat an English exam required for qualification as an English interpreter in Shanghai on Sunday morning.

Sunday's exam consisted of written and oral sections and only those who passed will receive the qualification, according to a spokesman with the Shanghai Municipal Office for Affairs on the English Interpreters' Exam.

According to the spokesman, over 160,000 people have taken the English interpreters' exam since it was first introduced in 1995, and only 12,000 have been awarded the certificates qualifying them to be English interpreters in Shanghai.

The four other cities participating were Nanjing, capital of Jiangsu Province, Suzhou, a well-known scenic city in Jiangsu, Hangzhou, capital of Zhejiang Province, and Ningbo, a port city in Zhejiang.
 
(Xinhua News Agency March 22, 2004)