Two students from St Gregory’s Catholic School have been specially commended in the University of Oxford’s annual Anthea Bell Prize for Young Translators.
Bella and Libby, both from Year 9 at St Gregory’s Catholic School, achieved success in the prestigious national competition which saw thousands of entries from schoolchildren around the country. The result is particularly impressive as this is the first year the school has participated in the contest.
The Anthea Bell Prize for Young Translators is an initiative of the Queen’s College Translation Exchange and runs across four levels in five languages, covering all year groups at secondary school from ages 11 to 18.
The Queen’s College Translation Exchange’s mission is to inspire lifelong engagement in languages and international culture, and in particular to encourage young language learners to continue with their studies through their schooling and beyond.
St Gregory’s teacher Jane Barraud, who is also the school’s Subject Leader in Modern Foreign Languages (MFL), explained about the competition; “Queen’s College, Oxford, has been running a creative translation competition for young translators for the past four years, but this is the first year St Gregory’s has participated.”
“Between January and April, a group of aspiring linguists in Year 9 attended an extra-curricular creative translation club run by some of our school’s MFL teachers. They included Mr Card and Mrs Jotischky for Spanish and myself for French,” Mrs Barraud explained.
“The five best entries for each language were submitted and out of 15,000 participants and 3,500 entries, two of our students received a special commendation for their translation of the 1865 Victor Hugo poem La Méridienne du Lion.”
“This is a fantastic achievement given the number and standard of entries received this year,” Mrs Barraud continued, before adding that a team of undergraduates and professional translators judged the entries to this year’s competition.
