The College is delighted to share that the Queen’s Translation Exchange (QTE) was recognised at this year’s Vice-Chancellor’s Awards.
QTE was announced as the winner in the category of Local Community Engagement for their work partnering with schools to raise the profile of language learning and develop inclusive, creative, and cultural connections to the University.
Director of the Translation Exchange Dr Charlotte Ryland said:
We share this award with our fantastic community of student ambassadors, many of whom are at Queen’s. These students, who work with us to design and deliver Creative Translation workshops in local schools, represent the best of our languages community here at Oxford.
The award recognises QTE’s impact last academic year, when student ambassadors delivered creative translation workshops to over 700 pupils across Oxfordshire. This included pupils from Years 4-13 and involved 16 local state schools. The same year, 3,000 pupils from 18 Oxfordshire schools took part in the Anthea Bell Prize for Young Translators, with several being named National and Area Winners across all six languages.
In the current year, this impact has grown. Nationally, there were over 25,000 participants in the Anthea Bell Prize, from well over 500 schools. As engagement in language learning slows across the UK, QTE’s work is bucking the trend and showing that there is widespread and deep enthusiasm for languages when it is inclusive, creative, and cultural.
Charlotte is now leading a project to support universities across the UK to collaborate on advocacy and outreach for languages, convinced that by working together we can multiply the kind of impact that QTE is having, to stem and then reverse the decline in language learning.
The Vice-Chancellor’s Awards recognise achievements and celebrate success across the University, from academics and researchers to professional, technical, and support staff. There were 170 award entries across the 13 categories this year, with over 1,000 individuals included in the nominations.
The Vice-Chancellor Professor Irene Tracey, Vice-Chancellor CBE FRS FMedSci presented the awards at a special ceremony at the Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities on Thursday 4 June. Earlier that week, QTE participated in the awards showcase to share more information about their work with the collegiate University and meet other nominees.
Read more on the Awards webpage.
All images: John Cairns Photography
