The Queen's College Record 2023

and contextual knowledge are skills any successful researcher uses.
The accessibility of the session meant that even when the language was
unfamiliar to the students, they were all really confident with their translations –
a genius concept!”
Anthea Bell Prize for Young Translators
Our Anthea Bell Prize for Young Translators entered its third year and enthused even
more young people and teachers for creative translation and international culture,
with over 15,000 participants right across the UK. By the end of the programme,
we want our young participants to feel that language learning is relevant to them,
that studying languages at university is an appealing and viable course for them,
and that Oxford is open to them too. Numerous applicants to Queen’s and other
colleges now cite QTE and the Anthea Bell Prize in their personal statements, and
this teacher’s comment from a state school in Scotland brought that impact home:
Reports and College Activities
“Pupils really enjoy being able to have access to a competition like this. This
competition is a huge opportunity for these young people to have a link to
an institution like Oxford University. One of our pupils last year entered, won,
and now holds a conditional offer to study at Oxford University after being
inspired by his own success to apply.”
Think Like a Linguist
If the decline in language learning is to be reversed, then we need to collaborate with
other organisations across the UK as much as possible. To this end, this year we
launched a major partnership project with Oxford and Cambridge Modern Languages
faculties, and with Widening Participation at Cambridge. ‘Think Like a Linguist’
brought together 30 pupils from six schools in and around Rochdale, for a series of
events that help pupils aged 12-13 to make informed choices about languages at
GCSE. Each session focuses on a different aspect of language learning and enables
students to consider the question What does it mean to think like a linguist? from a
unique perspective. The programme culminated in a visit to Oxford, which saw the
pupils attend workshops at St Edmund Hall, before donning graduation gowns and
mortar boards for a presentation and graduation event in our Shulman Auditorium.
As the project’s coordinator in Rochdale noted:
“This project has put languages on the agenda in these schools; it has made
them visible in a way that is very rare. We expect this to have an impact across
the whole cohort, to demystify Oxbridge and to enhance the value of studying
languages at university level.”
Chris Dobbs, Hollingworth Academy, Rochdale
The Visible Translator
Making translation visible and accessible is central to all our activities, but this took
a new form this year with our residency with award-winning writer and Japanese
College Record 2023 | The Queen’s College 49