Winners Have Been Announced! – The 7th Translation Challenge at the University of Essex

For the seventh year in a row, The University of Essex and the UK-based language service provider TTC wetranslate joined forces and ran a challenging competition designed to provide translation students with experience in the translation industry.

Split into teams of Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish, the final year and master’s students have gained valuable insight into what it means to be a translator working with business clients in a real translation agency. This year’s sponsor client was Computair, who are a leading developer of design, selection and manufacturing software for the Heating, Ventilation, Air Conditioning and Refrigeration (HVAC-R) industries. 

After the Translation Challenge launch on the 15th January where the participating students were introduced to the client through a video and were briefed about the project, they set to work translating the two technical flyers the client had for them. You can find the press release for the launch here.

The seventh edition of Translation Challenge has run for almost four weeks, and on the 12th February, the winning teams were announced.

On the awards day Ignazia Posadinu, PG Translation and Interpreting Coordinator and MA Director in Translation, Interpreting, and Subtitling at Department of Language and Linguistics said: “The best assignment our translation students could get: challenging, meaningful and valuable.”

Tamsin De Filippo, Marketing and Research Specialist at Computair said: “I hope the students enjoyed the presentation, and I’d like to say thanks again to them for completing what must have been a very technical and challenging piece of work.”

TTC MD Levent arrived at the awards ceremony early and had a chat with the participants to hear the following comments: “Translation Challenge was challenging, interesting, technical and eye opening for us. We had the opportunity to improve our time management, teamwork and organisation skills in terms of utilising resources and people.”

When asked for his take on this, Levent continued and said: “As a company, we support the United Nations Global Goal Number 8 – Decent Work and Economic Growth. The Translation Challenge competition is aligned with this goal. I believe we are helping students by showing them the part they can play in achieving a goal for a customer. As a result of taking part in this competition, many students have found employment as project managers and translators in our industry. This makes me very proud.”

Here are the Winning Teams for each language:

Arabic:

• Leena A S ALMOHAIMEED
• Nedal H M THANI

Chinese:

• Jing (Lily) XIA
• Yuxin (Yogi) YANG
• Liuyi (Lisa) QIU
• Chuyi (Zoey) ZHENG
• Yi-Wei (Lusiano) FANG

French:

• Natalie FLACK
• Ines JOBIN 
• Beril KAYAALP

German:

• Lena PAULUS
• Özlem AKKULAK
• Rhianna Watson
• Steven RUSSELL

Italian:

• Elena ZOLLINO 
• Yoana STOYKOVA 
• Daniel SHADBOLT 
• Lelia FARAONI 

Portuguese:

• Filipa MCQUEEN
• Maria GAYLISH
• Adriana MARTINHO ASSIS ROSA
• Flavia F GOMES
• Alcindo MEDINA
• Tereza BUCHAROVA

Spanish:

• María SALAS ARIAS
• Sofía MELENDEZ ROJAS
• Megan COOK
• Weronika SWIERCZEK
• Natalia DIAZ MEJIA
• Reinis RUKS

Claudia Alsdorf, Senior Lecturer in German at the University of Essex, said: “The Translation Challenge is a wonderful opportunity for our students to gain an insight into real-life situations, what it means to translate under time constraints and follow specific practical requirements for a real business client. As a lecturer, I value the collaboration with the translation agency TTC wetranslate immensely, not least for the enthusiasm and professionalism of the staff!”

Stay tuned for the Translation Challenge 2020 Turkey, in which there will be two universities involved and the students competing for providing the best Turkish translation to this year’s sponsor! We will launch and release news on 24^th February.

As a result of its work on the Challenge, TTC wetranslate was a 2019 finalist in the ‘Best Collaboration between a University and Employer’ category in the National Undergraduate Employability Awards.

If you would like your company to take part in the next Translation Challenge, please contact Levent Yildizgoren at levent@ttcwetranslate.com, giving details of your global journey.

To find out more about the Translation Challenge, visit this page or read the 2019 e-brochure here.

Watch Translation Challenge 2020 video below to get a quick overview: