Anthea Bell Prize for Young Translators

The Anthea Bell Prize is the UK’s leading translation prize for schools, engaging over 25,000 young language learners every year. Founded in 2020, it is inspired by the life and work of the great translator Anthea Bell. The Prize promotes language learning across the UK and inspires creativity in the classroom. By providing teachers with the tools they need to bring translation to life, it motivates more pupils to study languages throughout their time at school and beyond.

The Anthea Bell Prize is free to enter and open to pupils aged 11-18 at all schools across the UK. The Prize currently offers translation from French, German, Italian, Mandarin, Russian and Spanish into English, and from French into Welsh.

The Prize is designed to be integrated into languages teaching throughout the school year. To that end, registered teachers have access to over 100 free teaching packs, each dedicated to the creative translation of authentic literature and culture. These can be used in the build-up to the competition and as a complement to curriculum teaching year-round.

The Anthea Bell Prize left me wanting to delve further into the world of translation and the possibilities that come with it.

Year 12 Student Feedback, 2024

Get involved!

The 2026-2027 Prize will launch on 18 September 2026, in time for European Day of Languages (26 September) and International Translation Day (30 September).

Prize FAQs

Details for 2026-27

Anthea Bell Prize for Schools in Wales

Sample Resources

Past Winners and Commendees

Impact

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We have had a brilliant time delivering these resources. Year 7 all the way through to Year 13 have engaged brilliantly and students have responded really well to the challenge. The resources were so well thought through, so easy to use and an absolute joy to teach.
State Secondary MFL Teacher, 2022

This programme has really helped us to recruit students for A level next year. We had not been able to have the right number of students to run the course for the last two years, so it has been amazing to see how the little club we run for this competition last year has made such a difference in the appreciation of the language from our students.
State Academy MFL Teacher, 2023

Our experience of the Anthea Bell Prize for Young Translators has been extremely positive. After taking part for the first time last year, multiple students chose to join the competition again this year, which already shows how motivating and inspiring they have found the process. I’ve noticed a real shift in how students now approach translation tasks in GCSE lessons: they are far more engaged, intrigued, and willing to experiment.
State Comprehensive MFL Teacher, 2025

Anthea Bell OBE (1936–2018)

Anthea Bell OBE (1936–2018) ranked among the leading literary translators of the 20th and 21st centuries. Her work from German, French and Danish into English encompassed the writings of Kafka, Freud, E.T.A. Hoffmann, the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, Georges Simenon, W.G. Sebald, René Goscinny, Cornelia Funke and many others.

She won numerous literary awards, some of them several times, and was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 2015.

We are delighted to be able to honour Anthea’s great work, and her commitment to encouraging young language-learners and translators, with this prize. The Anthea Bell Prize for Young Translators was created by Charlotte Ryland, founding Director of the Queen’s College Translation Exchange. Charlotte had the pleasure of working with Anthea Bell for many years, and is proud to have founded this prize in her honour.

Supporters

The competition has been established in partnership with the Stephen Spender Trust. It is generously supported by The Queen’s College and St Hugh’s College, Oxford, the Independent Schools’ Modern Languages Association, the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany in London, the Institut français in London, the Embassy of Switzerland in the UK, the Swire Chinese Language Foundation, the Austrian Cultural Forum London, the Italian Cultural Institute London, the Instituto Cervantes London, the Association for Language Learning and Oxford University Press. Prizes are kindly donated by Penguin Classics, Vintage Books, Oxford University Press and the Goethe-Institut London.

This competition is inspired by the ‘Juvenes Translatores’ competition run by the European Commission, for which UK students are no longer eligible. We are grateful for the advice & support of our colleagues at the former European Commission Representation in the UK, which closed in December 2019.