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"The contest promotes language learning in schools and translation as a career," said Androulla Vassiliou, the European Commissioner for Education, Culture, Multilingualism and Youth. "Knowledge of languages can open your mind to different cultures and boost your job prospects," she added.
The contest will be held at the same time across the EU (09.00 – 11.00 GMT) on Thursday, 24 November 2011. Under the school’s supervision, participants will have two hours to translate a text, which the Commission will send to the schools shortly before the competition starts. Dictionaries can be used, but not electronic devices.
The theme of the texts to translate will be volunteering to mark the fact that 2011 is the European Year of Volunteering.
All the national winners will be invited to an awards ceremony in Brussels in March 2012, hosted by the European Commissioner for Multilingualism, Androulla Vassiliou.
Schools wishing to participate must respond by completing the online registration before the 20 October 2011.
Background
The number of schools selected from each member state (73 from the UK) mirrors the number of seats each country will have in the European Parliament in 2014. If a member state exceeds its quota, the Commission will use a random selection method to determine which schools can participate. The quotas per country are:
| Austria | 19 |
| Belgium | 22 |
| Bulgaria | 18 |
| Cyprus | 6 |
| Czech Republic | 22 |
| Denmark | 13 |
| Estonia | 6 |
| Finalnd | 13 |
| France | 74 |
| Germany | 96 |
| Greece | 22 |
| Hungary | 22 |
| Ireland | 12 |
| Italy | 73 |
| Latvia | 9 |
| Lithuania | 12 |
| Luxembourg | 6 |
| Malta | 6 |
| Netherlands | 26 |
| Poland | 51 |
| Portugal | 22 |
| Romania | 33 |
| Slovenia | 8 |
| Slovakia | 13 |
| Spain | 54 |
| Sweden | 20 |
| United Kingdom | 73 |
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| Total | 751 |
For more information, please contact the London press office on 020 7973 1971.
Please note: all amounts expressed in sterling are for information purposes only.
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