European Commission Representation in Ireland press release: Dublin schoolgirl scoops EU translation prize
Congratulations to Maeve Walsh of Loreto High School Beaufort in Dublin who has been announced today as the Irish winner of the European Commission’s annual translation competition for 17 year old secondary school pupils. More than 3,000 pupils from 750 schools across Europe took part in the competition in November last year when they translated a one-page text from any one EU official language into another.
Maeve chose to translate from Irish into English and her translation was judged to be the best from all entries received from the 12 Irish schools taking part. She will be invited to Brussels in March to receive a prize from the EU Commissioner responsible for multilingualism, Androulla Vassiliou. Maeve will also get to meet the national winners from all the other EU countries at the prize-giving ceremony and have a chance to see the Commission’s translators at work.
The Juvenes Translatores (Latin for ‘young translators’) competition is organised annually by the European Commission's Directorate-General for Translation, whose translators mark the entries received from secondary school pupils from all over Europe and select a winner from each country. Marking and evaluating the translations was no easy matter as the quality was very high and competition really tight. The aim of the competition is to promote language learning in schools and give young people a taste of what it is like to be a translator.