The Place Museum in Beijing has employed its first foreign consultant just one year before the museum's 80th anniversary.

Dr. Afreda Murck, the former deputy director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City is now serving as a visiting professor at Peking University.

She has made considerable achievements in the study of Song Dynasty artwork.

The foreign expert will take charge of perfecting the foreign content on the website of the Palace Museum.

Afreda Murck will work in the Palace Museum twice a week and check the English content on website, making it better accord with foreign visitors' interests.

Officials with the museum say the English and Japanese online content has been poor since first posted in 2001.

Most of the translators serving the museum's website translated works literally, and did not find the proper words and expressions to match the content.

(CNTA June 16, 2004)