European Commissioner for Education, Culture, Youth and Sport, Tibor Navracsics, today handed awards to the 28 winners of the European Commission’s annual translation contest ‘Juvenes Translatores’.
“I congratulate the young translators, as well as their teachers and parents, for these outstanding achievements. In our diverse cities and classrooms, linguistic and intercultural skills help us pursue both successful careers and rewarding lives. Languages are doors to other cultures, and you have successfully walked through them. Europe needs more people to follow you,” said Commissioner Navracsics.
A total of 28 secondary school students, one from each of the European Union’s Member States, won in a competition with over 3 250 participants from 736 schools across the continent. The students had to translate texts on the topic of development cooperation.
The theme was chosen to mark the 2015 European Year of Development. ‘Warm congratulations to this year’s winners! Juvenes Translatores is a great platform for students to test their language skills, an essential skill in our multilingual union,‘ said Kristalina Georgieva, European Commission Vice-President in charge of Translation and Interpretation, in addition to Budget and Human Resources.
The participating pupils could choose from any of the 552 possible combinations between any two of the EU’s 24 official languages. This year, students used 166 language combinations, including translating from Czech into Italian, from Maltese into Dutch, and from Danish into Polish. All winners chose to translate into their strongest language, as the official translators in EU institutions do.
The translations were checked by the European Commission’s in-house translators. Since 2007, the Juvenes Translatores (Latin for ‘young translators’) contest has been organised every year by the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Translation to share their passion for languages with school students across Europe, and highlight the advantages of language learning for career and personal development. Pictures and video from the award ceremony will be made available on EbS, the names of the winners are online.
