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2020 contest

A competition to reward the best young translators in the European Union

The European Commission congratulated the 27 winners of its Juvenes Translatores 2020 translation contest with a live online award ceremony. It remains available to watch on demand on the Directorate-General for Translation YouTube channel, by anyone that is passionate about the translation profession, about languages, about the youth of Europe and our future.

Besides warmly commending the winners and hearing their fascinating speeches about their experience, the ceremony also featured an address by European Commission President von der Leyen, the perspective of a winner’s teacher, translators from DGT, polyglots speaking up to 32 languages, and other fascinating aspects of the contest and its winners.

The goal of Juvenes Translatores is to promote language learning in schools and give young people a taste of what it's like to be a translator. The competition is open to 17-year-old secondary school pupils and takes place at the same time in all participating schools across the EU.

The topic chosen for this year´s contest – ‘Navigating in challenging times – together we are stronger' – turned out to be an accurate reflection of Europe during the past year.

The participants could choose to translate between any 2 of the EU's official languages. Of the 552 possible language combinations, the budding translators used an impressive 150.

Staff translators at the Commission assessed the translations and selected the 27 winners (one per EU country) from among almost the 2,800 participants across Europe. In addition, 248 students received special mentions for outstanding translations.