Bravo to EU's young translators
The names of the 27 winners of the European Commission’s annual EU Young Translator Juvenes Translatores contest for secondary school pupils are published today (28 January, list of winning pupils/schools below). More than 3 000 pupils from 750 schools sat the contest in November 2012. The winners – one per EU country – will be invited to an award ceremony in Brussels on 11 April to receive their prizes from Commissioner Androulla Vassiliou and will also have the chance to see the Commission's translators at work.
“The contest is an excellent way to promote language learning and translation as a possible career. Language skills are a fantastic asset: they broaden the mind and can boost employability, something which is especially important in the current economic environment," said Androulla Vassiliou, Commissioner for Education, Culture, Multilingualism and Youth.
The contestants translated a one-page text based on their choice of any of the 506 language combinations possible among the EU’s 23 official languages. All 23 were indeed used as source languages. The winners also exhibited a fair share of linguistic diversity, -11 translated from English, 5 from French, 5 from Spanish, 4 from German, 1 from Estonian and 1 from Irish. The texts were marked by the Commission's translators.
