Translating Success!

This year Ysgol Aberconwy entered the Anthea Bell Prize for Young Translators competition run by The Queen’s College at Oxford University.  The competition took place in April where students were given a poem to translate from German or French into English.  

The university provided the school with some practice translations to do first, to foster an interest in literary translation and to spark creativity in our students’ writing. 

All linguists in key stage three took part, however schools had a limit to the number of entries they could submit so our Modern Foreign Languages (MFL) department had to first judge the submissions to find the twenty entries they thought best. 

A team of undergraduates and professional translators then judged all the entries to the competition. The judges said that they were very impressed by the standard of entries and that they had received over 3,200 submissions from more than 260 schools from across the UK!

Given the stiff competition, we are absolutely delighted to announce that we have a winning entry for Wales including two commendations ! 

Congratulations to Samuel and Charlie in year 9 whose joint effort saw them win the Level 2 Area prize for Wales for their translation of the German poem ‘das Traumel‘. As area winners their entry will now be put through to the national competition! What a fantastic achievement!

Congratulations also to Ruby in year 7 and Tia in year 9 who were both awarded commendations for their French translations. Ruby was awarded a Level 1 Commendation for Wales for her translation of French poem ‘Le Crapaud‘ and Tia was awarded a Level 2 Commendation for Wales for translating the French poem ‘L’Arbre Bleu‘.

Miss McAllister, Head of MFL at Ysgol Aberconwy said, “This is excellent news! It’s a fantastic achievement to have three students whose work is prize worthy, particularly when the competition is so strong. Well done to all those who took part, especially our winners, we are very proud of you!”