EU secondary schools can now enrol for the second edition of the Juvenes Translatores (young translators) contest, launched by the European Commission in 2007 to promote language learning and translation. Registration will be carried out in two different phases.

All the schools willing to participate in the contest are welcome to announce it and to submit their contact information between September 1st and October 20th. They will have to fill in and submit an electronic registration form which is available on the contest website in all 23 official EU languages.

At the end of the registration period, a number of schools from each Member State will be selected randomly. The number of schools to be selected will be based on the number of votes that the Member State has in the Council of the European Union multiplied by two. In total 690 schools and up to 2 760 pupils will be selected to participate.

After the selection, the schools must communicate the names of up to four participating pupils. These pupils will then take on the challenge of the translation contest, to be held on 27 November 2008, thus discovering the challenge of moving text from one language to another and the fundamental role of translation for the life of the Union.

In the second phase, the schools have to nominate up to four pupils born in 1991 and provide details of the language combinations they have chosen for the short text to be translated in the contest. The choice is free among the 23 official EU languages

On the contest day, November 27th, the pupils from the selected schools will have a short text to translate at the same time in all EU Member States under the supervision of the schools.

After the contest, translations will be evaluated by a panel of professional translators from the Directorate-General for Translation of the Commission, and the contest jury will choose the best translation from each Member State. The 27 winners will be announced in January 2009. In April 2009, the winners will be invited to Brussels to an award ceremony in which they will receive their prizes from Leonard Orban, the Commissioner for Multilingualism.