Déithín Ní Fhátharta from Coláiste Chroí Mhuire in An Spidéal, Co. Galway is the Irish winner of the 18th EU young translation contest “Juvenes Translatores” for secondary schools, the European Commission announced on the 13th of February 2025.
Coláiste Chroí Mhuire is now on a three-year prize-winning run after its students Mr Fionnán Ó Coisdealbha and Ms Maitilde Warsop were Ireland’s winners in 2024 and 2023.
The Cois Fharraige school also won three of the five ‘special commendation’ awards for Ireland. They go to Caoilte Canny, Tomás Ó Neachtain, and Ella Nic Dhomhnaill.
Also winning special commendations were Faith Nic Aogáin, from Gaelcholáiste Cheatharlach, in Carlow, and Lucie Walsh of St Louis High School, Dublin.
53 students from 14 secondary schools took part in this year in the Irish leg of the pan-European competition.
Across the EU, 3070 enthusiastic participants tried their hand at translating a text between any two of the EU’s 24 official languages.
While English features prominently, the 144 language combinations chosen by students from 713 schools in the 27 Member States also included language pairs such as Polish-Portuguese, Slovenian-Danish and Romanian-Finnish, among others.
The European Commission’s translators selected one winner for each EU country. In addition, 341 students received special mentions for their impressive work. Piotr Serafin, Commissioner for Budget, Anti-Fraud and Public Administration, congratulated the winners and also thanked all the participants and their teachers for their enthusiasm. He added a message on the importance of language learning.
The award ceremony will take place in Brussels, on 10 April. As part of their trip, the 27 young translators will meet European Commission translators and see how they work. This experience will also bring them a unique opportunity to discover one another’s languages and cultures. As last year’s Swedish winner, Ivar Lasse put it: “Juvenes Translatores made me believe in the “European Project”.
Background
Funded by the Erasmus+ programme, the Juvenes Translatores contest has been organised by the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Translation every year since 2007, to promote translation and multilingualism. This contest has been a life-changing experience for many of its participants and winners, giving young people their first experience at the European institutions. Some have decided to gointo studying translation at university, and some have joined the European Commission’s translation department as trainees, or have become full-time translators.
The goal of the Juvenes Translatores contest is to promote language learning in schools and to give young people a taste of what it is like to be a translator. The competition is open to 17-year-old secondary school students and takes place at the same time in all selected schools across the EU.
Multilingualism, and therefore translation, has been an integral feature of the EU since the European Communities were first created. It was enshrined in the very first Regulation determining the languages to be used in the then European Economic Community, adopted in 1958. Since then, the number of official EU languages has grown from 4 to 24, as more countries became members of the EU.
