The Anthea Bell Prize for Young Translators was launched in 2020 by the Translation Exchange at The Queen’s College, Oxford. The competition is inspired by the work of the translator, Anthea Bell OBE (1936–2018), one of the finest and most influential literary translators of the 20th and 21st centuries, best known for her witty translations of the Asterix comic books. Not only did she translate works French, but also from German and Danish, tackling major works of European literature including Kafka and Sebald.

The competition was founded to promote language learning across the UK, to inspire creativity in the classroom and to motivate more pupils to study modern foreign languages throughout their schooling and beyond.

It runs across four levels in six languages, French, German, Russian, Mandarin, Spanish and Italian. There are close to 25,000 entries every year and this year, pupils of French and Spanish were highly commended for their translations. Albert P in Year 10 translated an extract from Marguerite Audoux’s 1011 novel Marie-Claire and Clementine F and Evie J translated an extract from the Chilean author, José Ignacio Valenzuela’s, Mi Tío Pachunga. With close to 25,000 entries per year, this is a superb achievement for our pupils.