Blog by Hannah McLaughlin, Creative Translation Ambassador at the Queen’s Translation Exchange
I’m Hannah, a second year student at the University of Oxford studying Spanish and Linguistics. Alongside my degree, I am studying French, Catalan and Irish, and I am a Creative Translation Ambassador (CTA) at the Queen’s Translation Exchange (QTE). I became an ambassador for QTE at the beginning of my second year, and have since run two successful workshops with schools to inspire further study of MFL. This blog details my experiences from training to ultimately carrying out a creative translation workshop, exploring what I learned and the value of the CTA programme, not just to aspiring linguists but to myself as well.
The programme began with a day-long training session in November, in which the other CTAs and I were put into the shoes of the students to whom we’d be delivering the workshops. Experiencing the activities first hand – for example, doing a ‘Multilingual Monsters’ warm-up wherein participants must draw monsters in groups and label their body parts in as many languages as they can – was really fun despite everyone in the room being adults, demonstrating the value of engaging creatively with languages at all ages. We were put into pairs to plan and develop a workshop according to our languages. Sophie (first year Spanish and Russian student) and I decided we would use an extract from Don Quixote – what better text to use to introduce students to creative translation than one of the world’s most widely translated novels!
In January and February, we completed our training sessions, got feedback on our presentations and were ready to run a workshop. Harriet (second year Spanish and Portuguese student) and I ran this one, for an enthusiastic group of Year 9 students who were visiting from Channing School in London. We were a bit nervous but mostly excited to share our passion for languages and hard work over the last few months, so it was fantastic when the workshop went really well and hopefully inspired the students to keep studying languages at GCSE level and beyond. It also allowed me to see what worked and what could be improved in our presentation – for example, changing some of our vocabulary or taking more time with our explanations to ensure that everyone in the room understood what was happening at each stage.
I felt fulfilled at the thought that students enjoyed themselves and that we’d potentially encouraged students to seriously consider studying languages further.
Corrections made, a few weeks later Sophie and I were welcomed into Fitzharry’s School in Abingdon to deliver our workshop to a group of Year 7s. I was initially anxious about the age of the students – would they struggle with the text or be too talkative, or even really quiet? Thankfully I was wrong. The students loved the opportunity to have a different and fun lesson instead of their usual French class, and engaged really well with the materials. It didn’t matter if they hadn’t translated the whole text, as long as they were thinking creatively about the parts they did do.
Both workshops were extremely successful and I felt fulfilled at the thought that students enjoyed themselves and that we’d potentially encouraged students to seriously consider studying languages further. An aspect I thought was great was the teachers setting the Anthea Bell Prize for Young Translators as homework, so that the students could directly apply the creative translation skills that they had developed in the workshop.
Moreover, becoming a CTA has not only inspired me in my own translation classes but also given me an opportunity to explore a career in teaching. Going on my year abroad next year, I plan to teach English as a Foreign Language, so this experience has been incredibly useful in assuring me that I enjoy and can be successful in teaching.
A huge thank you to everyone at QTE and to the students and teachers at Channing and Fitzharry’s. I highly recommend that all Oxford undergraduates and postgraduates interested in languages apply to become CTAs, and that teachers reach out to QTE to arrange workshops with their schools. I look forward to teaching more workshops in the future!
You can find more information about our Creative Translation Ambassadors programme here (for school teachers) and here (for Oxford students). Applications for the 2026-27 Ambassadors Training Programme will open in the autumn.
