The Linguist

@CIOL_Linguists SPRING 2023 The Linguist 11 FEATURES re-create the text in their target language. In this way, all learners are invested in a creative process which mobilises numerous linguistic and metalinguistic skills, and discover that to be a linguist is not to be a walking dictionary but to be open, resourceful and creative. Teachers register to access these resources, which enables us to provide support, including targeted support for state schools. Eva Lamb, a languages teacher in a large secondary school in Sheffield, didn't think the prize would be relevant for her students until she heard about the work we do to "engage with teachers like me and students like mine. It was an eye-opener!" she says. "What a find! What a way to engage my learners with the language I love! What a way to keep them going in these difficult times!" An inclusive approach The lockdown project of which I am most proud is our set of virtual poetry booklets. The Stephen Spender Prize requires young entrants to have access to international poems – to know where to look and how to choose ones that are appropriately challenging for translation. These booklets, published on our website, offer that access in 17 languages so far, from Balinese to Urdu. They are part of our mission to make the language-learning experience as inclusive as possible. UK classrooms have become hugely multilingual at the same time as the numbers opting to learn languages have radically decreased. This appears to be less of a paradox when you hear about the school experience of many English as an Additional Language (EAL) learners, who rarely have the opportunity to bring their own languages into the classroom, and who are sometimes taken out of language lessons in favour of further English literacy support. The Stephen Spender Prize enables us to address this problem head on, by offering opportunities for whole classes to learn and share poetry in diaspora languages. Our 'Spotlight' programme focuses on one diaspora language each year, through a booklet of poetry selected for young translators, teaching resources and translation workshops. The prize has a dedicated strand for translations from the Spotlight language. So far we have highlighted Polish, Urdu and Romanian, and we are now embarking on a major Ukrainian programme with support from the British Council and other partners. Our programmes work best when teachers are able to integrate them fully into school activities, and an outstanding example comes from our Romanian Spotlight. Julia Boore, EAL Lead at a Bournemouth primary school, took part in one of our Creative Translation for Teachers webinars, and subsequently devised a two-day Romanian Spotlight programme for pupils aged 7-11. "I could see so much potential in exploring creative translation in my school and was excited to learn about the Stephen Spender Prize. Here was something that could be the ideal opportunity to highlight our amazing multilingual community; to bring an awareness of languages right into the heart of the classroom; and involve the children in useful processes such as codebreaking, cultural inquiry, creative writing and editing," she says, "I was drawn to the Spotlight Prize as there is a category for under-10s and because we have over 30 Romanian pupils – what an opportunity it would be for them to shine!" Our work on inclusion has fed into our project with the Queen's College Translation Exchange (QTE), 'Inclusive Outreach through Translation'. This has developed and tested inclusive translation resources with young people across the UK. The partnership has also given rise to a new award for schools: the Anthea Bell Prize for Young Translators. We worked with QTE to design mini translation workshops for teachers to deliver to their pupils based on the Decode-Translate- Create model. In the last academic year we know that over 15,000 young people, from right across the UK, translated contemporary literature with their teachers through these two prizes, with more than 5,000 entrants. We look forward to developing the prizes as the next generation of linguists comes of age. The Stephen Spender Prize and its associated programmes are supported by organisations and individuals including the Rothschild Foundation, John S Cohen Foundation, Polonsky Foundation, Foyle Foundation, Old Possum's Practical Trust, John Lyon's Charity, British Council and Arts Council England. See stephen-spender.org/stephen-spender-prize. CREATIVE RESOURCES Creative translation training for teachers (above); and (left) Imogen Foxell illustrates Smok by Dorota Gellner for the Picturing Poetry project

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