French Translation Workshops

Year 9 French students enjoy Creative Translation workshop with Oxford University language undergraduates

On Thursday 25th January, a class of Year 9 French students received a visit from two current language undergraduates from the University of Oxford for an exciting and cerebrally challenging workshop on Creative Translation.

In groups they created multilingual creatures that sought to represent the linguistic diversity of Cheney, before coming up with their own creative English translation of Eugène Guillevic’s poem ‘Rond’. This led to a fascinating discussion of how one might ‘render’ ideas in another language, very different to the literal translation of words and sentences. Students were then challenged to write their own poem in a similar style, capturing the essence of a shape, colour, or motif of their choice.

Some truly excellent contributions were made, suggesting we may well have some budding creative translators in the making!