“Translation Day” Winners Announced!

This year the committee awarded 9 students

The thirteenth annual prestigious translation contest organized by the Faculty of Arts of the University of Ostrava has announced the names of the winning students from the philological disciplines.

Nearly 60 young translators entered the contest and nine of them were awarded the certificate of merit. “We do not grant rankings of 1st, 2nd and 3rd as it is usual in other contests, such an assessment would be very difficult considering the variety of submissions. However, the choice of translations to reward is strict, only translations which are publishable after minimal revision may earn the certificate of merit,” adds the contest judge dr. Renáta Tomášková from the Department of English and American Studies.

Contestants often choose texts from contemporary authors who have yet to be translated into Czech. For translations from English to Czech the committee granted the certificates of merit to four contestants – Pavlína Wünschová from the University of Pardubice, Michaela Teličková from Masaryk University, Hana Sýkorová from the University of Ostrava. Eliana Denkocy from the University of Ostrava earned her second certificate of merit this year showing she has talent for the art and science of translation. Ms. Denkocy’s translation was published in the journal Protimluv.

“The students must prove that they are able to transfer compositionally and linguistically unique and varied text without disrupting the author’s style. They have to make use of the Czech lexical richness, have to handle the wordplays, humour or irony of the original, translation of allusions and they have to keep the story’s atmosphere. They have to work with the language very creatively to make the translation vibrant and readable,” states Tomášková.

Certificates of merit were awarded for other languages as well. For the translation from Polish the certificate of merit went to Eliška Novotná. For the translation from Russian the certificate of merit went to Michaela Peřinová from Palacky University Olomouc, who chose the translation of a contemporary Russian author Anna Matvejevová in which she had to deal with colloquial speech. For the translations from Spanish there were granted two certificates of merit; Marcela Klimešová from Masaryk University and Anna Melicharová from Charles University, who excellently translated the poems of Peruvian poet César Vallejo. For the translation from French the certificate of merit was given to Jakub Rubeš from the University of Ostrava. This year no certificate of merit was given for the translation from German as the submissions did not meet the awarding criteria.

About the “Translation Day” contest

As the only contest of its kind in the Czech Republic intended exclusively for linguistic students, “Translation Day” attracts dozens of students each year from all universities in the Czech Republic. Contestants attempt to translate a variety of texts both contemporary and older fiction, poetry and non-fiction. Thanks to the contest the students are able to compare the quality of their translated texts and acquire experience with translations of difficult texts. Translation Day is for many students the launch of their future career as a translator.

The students send to the contest a translation of any text they choose according to their interest or planned professional orientation. They compete in two categories, literary (prose and poetry) and non-literary (non-fiction). The translations can be from 9 different languages – English, Russian, Polish, Spanish, German, Italian, French, Portuguese and Latin. The majority of translations are traditionally from English, then from Russian, Spanish, German and Polish. The quality of translations was assessed by the committee formed from the academic staff of the Faculty of Arts and even this year they praised the high quality of the contributions.

Updated: 16. 05. 2018