For the second year in a row, The University of Essex and TTC wetranslate are running the Translation Challenge competition for the Language and Linguistics students.
At this years launch on January 15th, approximately 130 students (around 40 more than last years 76) were broken up into teams to translate Mandarin, French, Spanish, Italian, German and Portuguese. Final texts from the groups were handed in on January 30 2015 and winners will be announced in less than a week on February 18th 2015.
An exciting change
This years challenge came again with an exciting opportunity to step away from the theoretical work and jump into the role of real life translators. Students were given the chance to embark on a real translation project for Brandler Galleries, a fine art gallery based in Brentwood, Essex. The challenge integrated a field trip to Brandler Galleries Ltd, where they were given the advantage of a hands on project that would give them a more informed understanding of the source text. The students were also able to meet the Galleries owner Mr John Brandler.
The prize
The winning team of the competition will receive the prestigious Certificate of Achievement along with a coaching/mentoring session with TTC Wetranslate’s managing director Levent Yildizgoren.
Two of the competing students when asked if they felt the challenge helped to better prepare them for a future as a professional translator commented to this effect. Boning “Choppy” Nie, translating into Simplified Chinese, said: “I learnt that translators don’t always work alone, in many occasions translator needs to cooperate, which is good because we tend to over/underestimate ourselves every now and then, but having partners keeps ourselves in check and keeps us from spiralling.”
Emma Clarke who has a translation industry background said: “ I used to work as a project manager for a translation company and this challenge has been invaluable in showing me the other side of the process. I think it has also reiterated to me the importance of thorough background research and proofreading!”
Good luck to all of the competitors this year – we are as excited as you are to hear the results!
