Brussels, 14/05/2008 (Agence Europe) - On Thursday 8 May, the European Commission launched the second edition of the “Juvenes Translatores” (young translators) contest. Encouraged by the enthusiasm aroused by the first contest, in 2007-2008, and the positive feedback from participants, it decided to organise the contest again. All EU schools will be invited to register between 1 September and 20 October 2008 for a contest to be held on 27 November 2008.
The website for the contest (http: //ec.europa.eu/translatores) will be online in the 23 official EU languages as of 9 May. A number of schools will then be selected from each member state according to the number of votes (multiplied by two) that the member state has in the Council of the European Union. The selection will be random. Each school will be able to register up to four students. In total, 690 schools and 2,760 students will be selected to participate. This second edition of the contest targets students who were born in 1991. They can choose the language combination for their translation freely among the 23 official EU languages (for example, from Polish into Romanian or from Maltese into Finnish). The contest will be held at the same time in all member states under the supervision of the schools. Translated texts will be marked by a panel consisting of professional translators from the Directorate-General for Translation, and the contest jury will choose the best translation from each member state. In March 2009, the winners will be invited to a ceremony in Brussels to receive their prizes from the commissioner for multilingualism, Leonard Orban. (O.L.)