On the morning of the 26 th of November, Juan López San Román, Javier Sánchez Bonilla, Juan Torre de Silva, Juan Conde and I (Álvaro Olivares) had the opportunity to participate in this year’s edition of the international competition Juvenes Translatores. This is a tournament for 2nd Baccalaureate students attending schools in the European Union in which they translate texts online.

The activity, organised by the Department for Translation, consisted of translating a text from English to Spanish alone and within a maximum time of ninety minutes. A priori, this might seem straightforward, but the difficulty lay in the fact that not only was it a literal translation of each sentence, but rather that we also had to take into account idiomatic expressions and to respect the general tone of the original text, regardless of whether it was colloquial, neutral or formal.

Each one of us had to translate an archaeological report about the discovery of an antique diary in which a tourist recounted his holiday adventures travelling across European waters. In order to complete our translations, we were each permitted the use of a paper dictionary and online access to the contest platform. We all succeeded in finishing and saving our work within the time limit given and we eagerly await the publication of the results.

Thinking beyond the possible prizes and the results, the experience was very useful and we are grateful we were counted upon to participate, especially as we were thereby introduced to a new way to develop and progress in our study and practice of English. The next time that you need to look something up on Google Translate, be sure to come first to the Young Translators of Retamar!