The sheer numbers and range of the contestants are striking: a total of
3,252 drawn from all 28 countries of the Union. The number of participating
schools is 72. There’s one winner from each country. In terms of participation,
it must surely be the largest of all translation contests. The countries with
more than 250 contestants are France, Italy, Poland and the UK. Spain comes
close with 241. The differences between countries can be explained by several
factors: demographics, school systems, relative importance of the country’s own
language, etc. The surprise, though, is the UK, because one reads so much in
the UK press about the decline of foreign language teaching there. Perhaps it’s
significant that the winning UK school is a private school for girls only(!) Anyway
the UK may be out of the competition soon because of brexit.
The target language of all the winners is the principal language of
their country. Out of 27 theoretically possible source languages, 18 winners
chose English, which reflects the popularity of English as a second language in
Europe. Three translated from the next most popular, Spanish. Nobody translated
from French. The student who surprised by translating from Hungarian to Finnish
has a Hungarian name, so Hungarian is probably not a second language for her.
The Italian winner, who translated from Slovenian, is from a school in Trieste,
which is a city right next door to Slovenia. Two contestants, the Irish and the
Maltese, translated from one of the official languages of their own bilingual countries.
A word of caution to Followers. These aren’t Professional Translators –though
there’s the reward of a prize – but nor are they naive Natural Translators. The fact that they are selected through their schools ensures that they’ve had
language courses, and it’s very likely that the courses have included some translation
exercises. Furthermore the schools probably only submitted the work of their
more advanced or more gifted students. It would be interesting if somebody
could delve into the background of those students. What makes a winner?
Once more the Commission is to be thanked for organising and financing
this encouragement. Grading thousands of translations is no mean job. But given
its popularity, it’s surprising that others haven’t emulated it. Couldn’t the
hundreds – yes, there are literally hundreds – of university translation programmes, get
together to organise a contest at a somewhat more advanced level?
Sources
European Commission. Juvenes Translatores: European Commission announces winners of its annual translation contest for schools. Press release. Brussels, 4 February 2019.
