“A city’s soul is in its stories. Let’s make sure Macao’s are heard.”
—The WHISPER Project Team

Macao, April 29, 2025 — In celebration of World Book Day (April 23) and Reading Month in the City of Macao 2025, the University of Saint Joseph (USJ) Library collaborated with the Faculty of Arts and Humanities and English Language Centre to launch WHISPER: An Immersive Literacy Journey, a multilingual initiative dedicated to amplifying local voices and fostering a culture of diverse reading.

At the heart of the project is “Immersive Literacy Journey”, a digital anthology of recorded readings featuring seven selected literary works that embody Macao’s rich cultural and linguistic heritage. Students and staff from participating institutions will narrate these texts in their mother tongues, including Chinese (Cantonese/Mandarin), Portuguese, English, and the endangered Macanese Patuá creole.

Experience in OTTOsonics

The Selected Works: A Multilingual Showcase
The curation committee, comprising USJ librarians and faculty, chose the following works to represent Macao’s literary mosaic:

  1. Macau Story in Different Languages: Participants select and read a paragraph that has been translated into their native tongues from the original context of “The Short Story of Macao,” and then tell the story in multiple languages.
  2. Taste of Macau: Original context from “澳門之味”, which discusses the city’s household dining customs and culture.
  3. Passagem Das Hora: This poem, which was translated by a faculty member, offers a stunning contemporary depiction of Macao.
  4. A Travers La Chine: An account of travel in China in 1886, written in French.
  5. Amochâi, vôs tá bom? A Macanese tale in Patua, a Macanese creole distinct from Portuguese and at risk of extinction.
  6. O Jantar Chinês: A dialogue-style collection of student and instructor stories.
  7. Crayon Drawing of the Dragon Boat Festival: A piece of local literature created by a local writer for the Tum-Ng (Dragon Boat) Festival.

How Libraries & Faculty can Participate
WHISPER is designed as a collaborative, campus-wide effort, and peer librarians are invited to engage in the following ways:

  1. Host a “Reading on Air Party”
  • Organise a library event where patrons can listen to the recordings in the soundscape installation named OTTOsonics.
  • Stories will be played hourly according to the event schedule. 
  1. Contribute Student/Staff Recordings
  • Encourage multilingual students or faculty to record readings.
  • Welcome faculty submissions of proposed reading materials.
  1. Promote Macao Literature
  • Post snippets on social media and invite local associations for an in-person visit.

Why this Matters
WHISPER OTTOsonics is an immersive audio system developed by the faculty to demonstrate the diversity of sounds. The earliest collaboration began with a September 2024 hearing experience in a virtual typhoon environment. When the librarians started planning for the event in April, a brainstorming session was held to invite the OTTOsonics Team for a new design performance, adapting the system with literature to enhance the reading experience.

The library provides a platform to present multilingual stories, history and living traditions to local and foreign students/faculty. The project also empowers young voices to take ownership of their cultural narratives by involving students and staff as narrators, while also fostering in-close faculty engagement with library projects.

Reading and Listening in Whisper

Key Project Timeline:

  • Librarians invited the faculty to form a working board (March 10, 2025)
  • Board Member proposed and selected the literature (March 20-28, 2025)
  • Recording, Production and Installation (April 1-28, 2025, flexible scheduling).
  • Promotional Materials: Posters, social media kits, and discussion guides (early April 2025)

Note: The opening ceremony, initially planned for April 29, has been postponed to May 9, 2025, due to Pope Francis’ memorial mass.

Contributed by the Whisper Project Team, Catarina Lei, USJ Librarian, Emily Chan, USJ Librarians, Prof. Gerald Estidieu, Ottosonic Curator, and Prof. Sandra Ng Ka Man, Ottosonic Curator