UPDATE: The deadline for participating in the Illinois High School Translation Competition has passed. Thank you to all of the students who participated this year! Results will be announced in late November.
The European Union Center at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign invites high school students from Illinois to take part in a translation competition featuring six Less Commonly Taught Languages: Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Polish, Swedish, and Ukrainian. Students will translate an intermediate to advanced text from one of the six languages into English. The texts, which range from literature to news articles, have been chosen by university faculty and graduate students who are native speakers of the languages. The 2023-24 Illinois High School Translation Competition aims to promote the study of Less Commonly Taught Languages and to provide high school students with an opportunity to get hands-on experience in translation.
Eligibility:
All students who are enrolled in high school in Illinois during the 2023-24 academic year are eligible to participate. Home-schooled students who reside in Illinois are also eligible to participate.
Rules:
Students may enter the competition independently, or teachers may coordinate the participation of multiple students. The translation of the text must be the individual student’s independent work, without help from others. The use of print and online dictionaries is permitted, but students should not use machine translation services such as Google Translate or ChatGPT.
Judging:
The competition will be judged by university faculty and instructors who have native knowledge of the target languages and who have experience with translation. One winning entry will be chosen for each of the six target languages, with 1-2 honorable mentions at the judges' discretion.
Awards:
The winners and honorable mention recipients will be given a prize and a certificate from the European Union Center at the University of Illinois, and they will be recognized at an award ceremony at the Italian Cultural Institute on December 8, 2023.
For further information:
Please don’t hesitate to write to eucenter@illinois.edu with any questions or concerns. See here for the results of last year's translation competition.