EU encourages young linguists
In many peoples opinion, it is not very often that the EU do very much that is worthwhile nor that is in anybody’s particular interest; I have, however, managed to find one example of an initiative that is actually a great idea and very worthwhile to the future of the translation services industry.
The EU has decided to repeat the sterling idea that they originally had last year of organising an EU wide contest for young translators. Run throughout 2007, this contest was open to all schools throughout the EU and the enthusiasm, positive feedback and level of participation in last years contest prompted this year’s decision for a re-run.
This year, registration for the Young Translators contest is open between 1st September and 20th October, with the competition itself being held on 27th November. Candidates will be allowed to select any language pair from within the 23 official languages of the EU for their appraisal and each school will be able to put forward up to four young translators for participation in the contest.
Representation within the contest will mirror the voting representation of the member states themselves; so for instance France, Germany, Italy and the UK will all have 58 schools participating; The Czech Republic, Greece Hungary and Portugal 24 and Austria, Bulgaria and Sweden 20 etc etc. Altogether, a total of 690 schools and some 2,760 students will take part in this year’s contest which is particularly targeting children born in 1991.
And who knows…a few more great ideas like this one and the EU might even justify its existence to doubters…but I doubt it.