The European Commission announced on Thursday the 27 young winners, one from each member state, of its annual translation contest for secondary schools on 25 November 2021.
The participants could choose to translate between any two of the EU's 24 official languages. Of the 552 language combinations (24*23) available, the 2,940 budding translators from 689 schools that took part in the contest used 153, including less common combinations such as Portuguese into Finnish, Bulgarian into Swedish, and Slovak into Greek.
The competition is open to 17-year-old secondary school students and takes place at the same time in all selected schools across the EU. The number of participating schools from each EU country is equal to the number of seats it has in the European Parliament, with the schools selected randomly by computer.
Schools can register on-line for their students to compete with peers around the EU. They have two hours for translating a text of ca 500 words. Dictionaries are allowed but not spell checkers or machine translation.
The topic of this year´s contest was ‘Let's get on track – towards a (greener) future' and reflects the EU's intention to work for a better, greener and more digital Europe, said Commissioner for Budget and Administration Johannes Hahn (10 February).
The European Commission has been organising the 'Juvenes Translatores' (Latin for ‘young translators') contest every year since 2007. Over the years, the contest has become a life-changing experience for many of its entrants and winners. Some have decided to study translation at university, and some have joined the Commission's translation department as a trainee or a full-time translator.
The Commission will organise an award ceremony for the 27 winners before the summer.
The Brussels Times
