Student wins EU translation award

A 17-YEAR-OLD student from Tory island off Donegal won a prize in an EU-wide translation competition.

Micheál Mag Fhionntaigh, who is a Leaving Cert student in Coláiste Phobail Cholmcille on Tory, was one of 1,500 students from all over the EU to enter the competition.

The judging panel made up of some of the EU’s professional translators chose his translation from English into Irish of an article on sustainable tourism as the best entrant from Ireland.

EU Commissioner for Multilingualism, Leonard Orban presented him with his prize at a ceremony in Brussels yesterday and told him he and the other winners were the best representatives of a new generation of EU citizens where the language of Europe is translation.

The students from about 300 schools were given two hours to translate the text on responsible and alternative tourism last November. In all, 134 different language combinations were used covering all 23 official EU languages.

This was the first ever translation competition organised by the European Commission to raise awareness of the key role of translation in the multilingual Union.

Mr Orban said the contest also gave the students an opportunity to see what it is like to be a translator and they were given a tour of the translators’ section where they could see how they work in translating the written word.

Translating EU laws, rules and notices into all the official languages costs €1.1 billion a year and employs about 2,500 people — a tenth of the commission’s workforce. Hundreds more are used to interpret the spoken word. Irish became an official language in January 2007.