Juvenes Translatores: a contest, a coincidence and a personal experience

Gent, 25 November 2019, Margherita Pancaldi - Sometimes coincidences surprise us. Things happen and only after many years we connect the dots and realise that it was all connected. This is the story of my experience, and of how an event that occurred in 2013 thanks to the European Commission's Directorate-General for Translation (DG Translation) acquired a different meaning only in November 2019.

 

First of all, you must know that I studied at the Liceo Linguistico Laura Bassi (high-school specialized in foreign languages) in Bologna, Italy, from 2010 to 2015. It was an intense and fun five years, during which I spent most of my time studying three foreign languages: English, Spanish and French.

In Italy you have to choose your future at 13 years old: at that age Italian students must decide which high school they want to attend.

There is plenty choice: studying foreign languages, studying classical languages such as Greek and Latin, studying scientific subjects, humanities, arts or music subjects.

But, as you can easily understand, letting 13-year-olds make such an important decision for their own future can have unpleasant consequences. Therefore, very often, students regret their course of study, change schools, fail to achieve good results because they are not fully satisfied with their choice.

But that wasn't my case.

 

Learning a foreign language: getting to know cultures, stories, people

When I chose my high school, I did it with a great awareness and confidence: I wanted to study foreign languages. I wanted to learn different languages, be able to travel and talk to the locals, learn about cultures and stories from all over the world.

In short, I loved languages and I was sure of my school career.

So when during my fourth year of high school my Spanish teacher entered the classroom and asked us if we wanted to participate in a translation contest, I was thrilled and of course I accepted.

The contest was called "Juvenes Translatores": it is Latin and means "young translators".

Probably, many of you are familiar with the name. I only discovered six years later that this is an annual competition organised by the European Commission's Directorate-General for Translation (DG Translation).

Surely my teacher at the time had told us who organized the contest, and yet, for some reason, I had completely deleted this memory. At least until 21 November 2019, when, while scrolling Twitter during my internship in Belgium, I discovered that the twelfth edition of Juvenes Translators was taking place in more than 700 schools across the European Union.

And suddenly, that experience from six years ago came back to me.

 

The languages of the European Union: 552 possible combinations

I remember that there was a first selection phase, because the school that enters the contest and is chosen by the European Commission can only participate with its five best students.

My school had organized an internal translation contest in the various foreign languages that we studied there. Around 60 students took part in this first phase, and the school then selected the five best candidates to compete in the official translation contest, on the day established by the European Commission's Directorate-General for Translation (DG Translation) and simultaneously with many other schools in Europe.

I was one of the five people selected: I had passed the first stage.

When the vice principal came into my class and told me in front of everyone, I was really excited. Unlike some of my classmates, who had taken part in the first selection phase only to skip a few hours of class (which is more than understandable at that age), I had done so with great conviction and was seriously interested.

Then, on the day of the test, the Directorate-General for Translation provides the schools with the texts to be translated. Students can choose the language combination they prefer, although the European Commission itself is keen to point out that students who translate into their mother tongue will always have an easier time than those who try to translate into a foreign language.

Each participant can choose to translate from any official language into any other official language of the European Union; it is important to always remember that the official EU languages are: Bulgarian (BG), Czech (CS), Croatian (HR), Danish (DA), Estonian (ET), Finnish (FI), French (FR), Greek (EL), English (EN), Irish (GA), Italian (IT), Latvian (LV), Lithuanian (LT), Maltese (MT), Polish (PL), Portuguese (PT), Romanian (RO), Slovak (SK), Slovenian (SL), Spanish (ES), Swedish (SV), German (DE) and Hungarian (HU).

In the 2018 edition, the Directorate-General for Translation received 3252 translations from all over Europe: 154 language combinations were used, of the 552 possible combinations (since each language can be translated into the other 23).

The language combination that I chose in 2013 was English-Italian: of the three foreign languages I studied in high school, English was definitely the one that made me feel safer.

 

A blast from the past and today's changes

The text I had to translate was about the advantage of twinning between different European cities, a subject that many citizens of the European Union care about in order to create cultural links and exchanges between different countries.

I remember bringing three big dictionaries to school and for the first time their weight seemed almost light, probably lightened by my excitement at the idea of participating in this competition. I remember the papers the professors had given us, the noise of the pen on the paper as I wrote fast so that I could finish the translation in the set time.

For the first time, however, this year's edition is online: until last year, the participants in the Juvenes Translatores contest translated on paper, as I did six years ago. From this year, the Directorate-General for Translation wants to bring students closer to the world of professional translation and therefore for the first time the competitors will translate using a computer, with the sole support of paper dictionaries.

Once the translation was over, in that small classroom with only five students and many dictionaries, the professors handed it over to the European Commission's Directorate-General for Translation, and we participants put aside the thought of the contest and we went on with our high school lives.

Finally, the Directorate-General for Translation chooses a winner for each member state. For the winners there is a trip to Brussels, where they will take part in an official ceremony during which they will receive the prize. Definitely an unforgettable moment for any 17-year-old student.

 

United in diversity

But basically, what is the purpose of Juvenes Translatores? As it appears on the European Commission's website, the aim is to promote language learning in schools and to allow young people to get an idea of how the translator's job works, to be "united in diversity", as the EU motto says. Learning foreign languages brings us closer to other peoples and allows us to better understand different cultures and, most importantly, for young people it means being able to take advantage of many opportunities for study and work throughout Europe.

In addition, according to the EU, the latest research highlights the growing need for translations and translators in Europe, a trend that needs to be taken into account in student education.

Undoubtedly, the competition encouraged some of the participants to undertake language studies and become translators.

For sure, it encouraged me.

Being able to take part in such an experience allowed me to know a working world that I did not know and, although I did not win and participated in the final award ceremony in Brussels, after six years I was still able to see first-hand the work of translators at the European Commission's Directorate-General for Translation.

Six years later I am in Belgium and I am doing my university internship at a company that keeps language professionals up to date, I write articles, I translatr and post-edit texts. This internship allowed me to go to the European Commission and meet translators from all over Europe, during the Translating Europe Forum 2019, which brings together industry experts in two days of interesting and inspiring meetings.

Six years later I finally connected the dots and realized that often things happen for a very specific reason, even if in the moment they happen we do not realize it.

 

To learn more, you can read the pdf of the Juvenes Translatores competition rules in Italian and English.

You can read the reasons why the European Commission has set up the Juvenes Translatores competition, in Italian and English.

You can read "Twinning is winning", the pdf version of the English text I translated in the 2013 edition.

 

 


Powered by CrossLang

Author: Margherita Pancaldi

Machine translation: SDL Machine Translation (previously SDL BeGlobal)

Post-editing: Margherita Pancaldi

Source language: italiano (it)


Additional information