Translation Nation is a project of the Eastside Educational Trust, an award winning arts education charity, which offers creative learning projects for children and young people. The Trust works in schools across the South-East of England, and is dedicated to encouraging primary school children to engage with translating languages via story telling and engaging with world literature.
The idea is that children, under the guidance of literary translators, will be able to translate stories their parents have recited to them in their own language, into English.
The children are then able to share their languages with their peers, which creates a mutual feeling of respect towards bilingual, or even multilingual, children.
Schools offer ways in which parents can become involved with their children’s language efforts, as well as promoting teachers to devise more creative and innovative ways to maintain their students’ interest in their language learning.
The project has been awarded a European Language Label (ELL), and the 2012 EuroTalk Primary Education Language Prize in recognition of its impressive and creative efforts towards increasing the awareness of the significance of language learning and translation.
The ELL judges said: “The level of translation work that went on was really impressive, as learners had to find the best words and phrases possible to express the mood, style, idioms and cultural references." They also praised the large amounts of intercultural knowledge gained through the process.
Director Rakhee Jasani of the Eastside Educational Trust was pleased with this formal recognition of the project’s work, and believes the work they are doing “is both empowering and inspiring for children of all cultures”.
Find out more about Translation Nation.