The European Commission announces today the 27 winners of its 18th EU translation contest for secondary schools ‘Juvenes Translatores'. 3070 enthusiastic participants tried their hand at translating a text between any two of the EU's 24 official languages. While English features prominently, the 144 language combinations chosen by students from 713 schools in the 27 Member States also included language pairs such as Polish-Portuguese, Slovenian-Danish and Romanian-Finnish, among others.

The European Commission's translators selected one winner for each EU country. In addition, 341 students received special mentions for their impressive work. Piotr Serafin, Commissioner for Budget, Anti-Fraud and Public Administration, congratulated the winners and also thanked all the participants and their teachers for their enthusiasm. He added a message on the importance of language learning.

The award ceremony will take place in Brussels, on 10 April. As part of their trip, the 27 young translators will meet European Commission translators and see how they work. This experience will also bring them a unique opportunity to discover one another's languages and cultures. As last year's Swedish winner, Ivar Lasses put it: Juvenes Translatores made me believe in the “European Project”.