The European Commission has announced the names of the 27 winners of its annual ‘Juvenes Translatores’ Young Translators' Contest, which this year has registered a record participation with around 3,000 17-year-old secondary school pupils sitting the contest. This represents more than 25% participation than last year's as well as more schools applying to take part, more than 1.600 compared to 1430 last time. The winners, one from each EU country, will be invited to an award ceremony in Brussels on 7 April.

The registration period for the contest  opened on september and the contest took place on 23 November 2010 at the same time and under the supervision of their schools. Each pupil had two hours to translate a one-page text from a language of their choice into any of the EU’s 22 other official languages.

The completed translations were marked by staff translators from the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Translation. Each was assessed by a native speaker of the language into which the text had been translated. A selection board then picked the best translation from each EU country. The 27 winners (one for each member state) and their texts were published in the Juvenes Traslatores website.

The prize will be a three-day trip to Brussels for each winner and an accompanying adult. The winners will receive their prizes and certificates from Rytis Martikonis, the new head of the Commission's Translation Directorate-General at the award ceremony on 7 April 2011. They will also have a chance to see and meet EU translators at work in the Commission.

‘Juvenes Translatores’ (Latin for ‘young translators’) is the only contest in which the 17-year-olds can test their translation skills in any of the official languages of the EU. It was run for the first time in 2007 as a pilot project to give young people a taste of what it is like to be a translator and to raise the profile of the translation profession and of language learning in schools. The feedback from teachers and pupils alike shows that it is also a lot of fun. The contest has also helped young people to decide on their future careers: some winners of previous rounds have gone on to take up language studies at university.