The European Union Center is excited to announce that the Illinois High School Translation Competition is back! We invite high school students from Illinois to take part in a translation competition featuring six Less Commonly Taught Languages: Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Polish, Swedish, and Ukrainian. Students will translate an intermediate- to advanced-level text from one of the six languages into English. The texts, which range from literature to news articles, have been chosen by university faculty and graduate students who are native speakers of the languages. The 2022-23 Illinois High School Translation Competition aims to promote the study of Less Commonly Taught Languages and to provide high school students with an opportunity to get hands-on experience in translation. 

Eligibility:

All students who are enrolled in high school in Illinois during the 2022-23 academic year are eligible to participate. Home-schooled students who reside in Illinois are also eligible to participate. 

Rules:

Students may enter the competition independently, or teachers may coordinate the participation of multiple students. The translation of the text must be the individual student’s independent work, without help from others. The use of print and online dictionaries is permitted, but students should not use machine translationservices such as Google Translate. 

Judging:

The competition will be judged by university faculty and instructors who have native knowledge of the target languages and who have experience with translation. One winning entry will be chosen for each of the six target languages, with 1-2 honorable mentions at the judges' discretion.

Awards:

The six winners of the 2022-23 Illinois High School Translation Competition will be given a prize and a certificate from the European Union Center at the University of Illinois, and the winners will be recognized at an award ceremony in Chicago in spring 2023.

How to Participate:

To participate, please register here. After you register, you will receive an automated email with links to the texts. Please send in your submissions either via this form or by email to eucenter@illinois.edu. The deadline to send in submissions is Wednesday, February 22, 2023 at 11:59 P.M. CST. Please note that registration is NOT a guarantee of inclusion in the competition and that only the first 15 submissions for each language will be considered, so encourage your students to submit their translations early! If the cap is reached, this will be indicated on the registration and submission forms. 

Please contact eucenter@illinois.edu with any questions.