The Maltese winner of the European Commission’s annual Young Translators’ Contest, known as ‘Juvenes Translatores’ was announced this week. She is Natalia Grima – a Sixth Former at De La Salle College – who had the best translation out of six schools, the maximum number of Maltese schools that can participate in the contest.
A winner for each EU country was selected from among more than 3,000 students who participated in the contest last November. The winners, including Natalia, will be invited to Brussels on 27 March to receive their prizes and to meet translators at work in the Commission.
“This contest encourages students to get to grips with foreign languages in a deeper way and to consider using their knowledge in their future career, whether as a translator or in any other professional field where multilingualism is an asset,” said Androulla Vassiliou, Commissioner for Education, Culture, Multilingualism and Youth. “The contest also inspires schools to learn from each other and try out different methods of language teaching.”
The winners all demonstrate that a knowledge of languages can take you further and open your mind to new possibilities.
Natalia Grima speaks four languages and plans to graduate as a lawyer specialising in European Law. She aspires to eventually work for EU institutions and lists photography, travelling and swimming among her leisure pursuits. She will have two-thirds of her hobbies catered for next March when attending the award ceremony in Brussels.
The contestants all translated a one-page text based on their choice of any of the 506 language combinations possible among the EU’s 23 official languages. Although many chose English as a source language, the total number of language combinations used was 148, which was the highest since the launch of the competition.
The theme of this year’s texts was volunteering (to mark the European Year of Volunteering 2011), but each language test featured different facets of the subject: the Dutch text, for instance, focused on restoring a church in Tuscany; the French translation paper focused on beach cleaning, the Polish one on working in a Chilean school for under-privileged children. A number of the teenagers who sat the contest in different countries were clearly inspired by the volunteering theme, with some deciding to enrol as volunteers for the Red Cross and other NGOs afterwards.
Article source: http://www.independent.com.mt/news.asp?newsitemid=139314
