With the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games drawing near, many Olympics-related job vacancies are open to job-seekers, according to the Beijing Times.

The job market needs talents who master English and have gone through professional educations in sports, tourism or marketing, the paper said.

In addition, more than 600 new job positions, such as Olympic venue managers, Olympic licensed product distributors, logistics center managers and Olympic logistics dispatchers, are awaiting competent contenders.

As far as translators are concerned, the current supply can only satisfy 30 percent of the demand, Huang Youyi, vice-director of the China International Publishing Group was quoted as saying. His agency, which currently employs 600 translators, needs about 1,000 more.

The market seeks mainly interpreters who can translate Chinese into English. To remedy the present shortage, 15 famous universities across the nation, including Peking University and Beijing Foreign Studies University, plan to enroll 200-400 master degree candidates in interpretation in October.

The Olympics have brought about a boom in the tourism industry and the supply of employees lags behind the demand. Employers sought a total of 5,017 tourism professionals on the website of a consultancy agency in July, compared to only 2,411 a year before.

(BOCOG September 3, 2007)