Essex students translate for business in annual competition

• Photos of the Translation Challenge on Flickr

Translation Challenge, the competition where Essex translation students get to test their skills on a real commission for a business in the region, has launched for the fourth year running.

This year’s competition will see over 50 students working in mixed graduate and postgraduate groups to translate a piece of text for the website of car tuning technology firm, TDI-Tuning. They will be translating into languages including Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish.

The competition is run in partnership between the Department of Language and Linguistics at Essex and Levent Yildizgören, Managing Director of translation agency TTC wetranslate. It is designed to give students the experience of working in a team, for a commercial client, on commercial text and to a professional deadline.

Speaking about the competition Levent said, “Translation Challenge is now an established event and has proven to be instrumental in complementing students' studies and their progress for employability. This year's company, TDI Tuning, is a technology focused innovative company running an e-commerce website. I am hoping that this will give students a real taste of the challenges faced in the translation industry.”

Ahead of this year’s launch, Michael Brand, Marketing Executive at TDI-Tuning, emphasized the importance of skilful translation, “Writing commercial English is an art in itself and whilst many can directly translate text into another language few can localise the rhythm, tone and flow of the original text and this is very important in capturing consumers’ interest.

“As a company that has exported its range of engine Tuning Box systems to over 70+ countries TDI-Tuning understands the importance of communicating clearly the benefits and features of its products to potential new customers. The translation students will need to ensure that, once localised, the text continues to engage readers and maintain the overall friendly and professional brand voice that TDI-Tuning has come to be known for the world over. The challenge is on!”

Guendalina Bagni, a student who took part in last year’s challenge was keen to emphasise its benefits, saying, “The Translation Challenge gave me an exciting opportunity - to test myself as a translator. Translating a real business piece allowed me to enhance my skills and build up my confidence. The need to work effectively in a group honed our competencies and enabled us to gain genuine experience of real world translation.”

The winners of the competition will be announced on Wednesday 22 February at an event at the University’s Colchester campus.

Essex is in the top 20 of UK mainstream universities for new graduate employment (HESA).