Partner Article

Learning the language of business

The bilingual business leaders of the future are ready to contest one of the most prestigious prizes in translation with all eyes on a transformative project entering its sixth year.

The annual Anthea Bell Prize for Young Translators was launched in 2020 to help combat the decline in language learning in schools, colleges and universities.

And last year saw more than 22,000 students aged 11-18 translate enriching, authentic texts across six languages.

One teacher described the Anthea Bell Prize for Young Translators as the catalyst for GCSE language students becoming ‘far more engaged, intrigued and willing to experiment’.

The Anthea Bell Prize for Young Translators is the flagship project of the Queen’s College Translation Exchange (QTE), based at Oxford University.

Free to enter, it offers secondary school students the opportunity to translate poetry, fiction and non-fiction.

And the prize now runs in six different languages including French (into English and into Welsh), German, Italian, Mandarin, Russian (including beginners) and Spanish.

Last month [February] saw ‘creative translation’ competition tasks sent out to languages teachers at more than 1,500 schools across the UK.

But the QTE team is determined to broaden the prize’s reach and encourage more students to foster a lifelong love of languages, embrace different cultures and recognise the career-boosting power that comes with speaking more than one language.

“We are on a mission to breathe new life into language learning and to rekindle students’ passion for languages and cultures,” explains Charlotte Ryland, Director of QTE, based at The Queen’s College, Oxford. 

“The Anthea Bell Prize for Young Translators aligns closely with the modern foreign languages curriculum across the UK, with texts often complementing key study areas around publicity, media, tourism and travel, festivals and traditions, identity, culture, and life in a global or multicultural society.

“We provide teachers and students with high quality resources which, we hope, will inspire creativity and conversations around culture and community in the classroom.

“A languages degree provides graduates with a broad and rich skillset and we want to ensure that today’s young learners are aware of that.”

The translations will be judged by a team of Oxford students and professional literary translators, with area and national winners to be announced in June 2026.

The texts to be translated include extracts from novels and memoirs, rhyming poems, children’s non-fiction and traditional folktales.

Anthea Bell OBE (1936–2018) ranked among the leading literary translators of the 20th and 21st centuries. 

“I had the pleasure of working closely with Anthea for several years,” adds Charlotte.

“She is best known as the stellar translator of the Asterix series but her work from German, French and Danish into English encompassed the writings of Kafka, Freud, E.T.A. Hoffmann, the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, Georges Simenon, W.G. Sebald, René Goscinny, Cornelia Funke and many more.

“She won numerous literary awards, some of them several times, and was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 2015.

“We’re delighted to be able to honour Anthea’s great work, and her commitment to encouraging young language-learners and translators, with this prize.”

To find out more about the Anthea Bell Prize for Young Translators click here. Teachers can register here to access this year’s competition tasks.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Simon Rushworth .