A winner for each EU country was selected to the EU Young Translators' Contest. According to the European Commission, the winners demonstrate that a knowledge of languages can take you further and open your mind to new possibilities.

The European Commission announced the names of the 27 winners of the European Commission’s annual Young Translators' Contest, known as ‘Juvenes Translatores’. The award ceremony will take place in Brussels, as it was in 2010.  Androulla Vassiliou, Commissioner for Education, Culture, Multilingualism and Youth, underlined that this contest encourages pupils to get to grips with foreign languages in a deeper way. In addition, the contest also inspires schools to learn from each other and try out different methods of language teaching.

The contestants all translated a one-page text based on their choice of any of the 506 language combinations possible among the EU’s 23 official languages. As common characteristic, all the translation had to focus on the theme of this edition, volunteering (to mark the European Year of Volunteering 2011). Although many chose English as a source language, the total number of language combinations used was 148, which was the highest since the launch of the competition.

European Commission's Directorate-General for Translation organises every year the ‘Juvenes Translatores’ (Latin for ‘young translators’) contest. It is open to 17-year old secondary school pupils (this time for those born in 1994) and takes place at the same time in all selected schools all over Europe.