The Translation Exchange launched the Anthea Bell Prize for Young Translators in 2020. The competition is inspired by the life and work of the great translator Anthea Bell. It aims to promote language learning across the UK and to inspire creativity in the classroom. By providing teachers with the tools they need to bring translation to life, we hope to motivate more pupils to study modern foreign languages throughout their time at school and beyond.
The Prize is free to enter and open to pupils aged 11-18 at all schools across the UK.
The Prize currently offers French (into Welsh and English), German, Italian, Mandarin, Russian and Spanish.
We wanted to make sure that this wasn’t a one-off event, but something that could be integrated into the year’s teaching. Before entering the competition, we invite you to prepare your students using our free teaching resources. Registered teachers receive teaching packs throughout the year, in the build up to the competition.
The 2024-2025 Prize launched on 19th September 2024, in time for European Day of Languages (26th September) and International Translation Day (30th September). This year, the competition ran from February to March 2025. You can find the names of the 2024-2025 competition winners, runners-up and commendees here.
The 2025-2026 Prize will launch in September 2025. Make sure to register to receive updates about the Prize, as well as access to our free creative translation teaching resources.
Information about the Anthea Bell Prize for Schools in Wales is also available in Welsh.
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!
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 School Teacher of Modern Languages, 2022
The resources were excellent. They were a great complement to my lessons. What is more, I could see the positive impact it has had on two of my students, whose grammar improved during the two terms that they translated the past competition tasks. I will definitely participate next year.
State Academy MFL Teacher, 2023
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
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.
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.
