Tullamore student wins translation award
Tullamore College student Daniel Scally scooped the award for 'best translation from Leinster' in an English-to-Irish translation competition recently.
The winners of the 'Aistritheoirí Óga 2024' (Young Translators) contest were announced at an award ceremony in Dublin on Monday last. Five secondary school students made the list, one from each of the four provinces in Ireland and one overall winner. All five winners translated texts from English to Irish.
Speaking at the awards ceremony, Minister of State with responsibility for Irish and the Gaeltacht, Thomas Byrne, said:
“I would like to extend my sincere congratulations to all the winners today, and of course to everyone who took part in the competition this year. The winners have shown us their great translating skills and it is encouraging to see young people showing so much interest in the field of translation and that secondary school students are thinking about the employment opportunities in Europe. I have no doubt that we will see some of these fine young people here today again as our colleagues in the European institutions in the years to come.”
Shanna Ní Rabhartaigh of the Irish Language Department at the European Commission said: “This important competition has gone from strength to strength since its inauguration seven years ago, as evidenced by the high number of schools that participated this year. The translations produced by the students were of a higher quality than ever before and the Irish-language community can look forward to the work in Irish that will come from this generation in the years to come.”
This year, 79 students from 29 schools took part in the contest, translating from English, French, German and Spanish to Irish.
The first edition of the competition was launched in October 2017. It is open to pupils who are at least 15 years of age.
The competition is part of a wider effort to raise awareness of the importance and benefits of the full status of the Irish language as an official working language of the European Union. Since January 2022, all legislation which is enacted in the Union is now translated into Irish. Moving forward the EU institutions need to ensure that they continue to have sufficient qualified staff to fulfil these new obligations.