Our talented linguists - Keziah and Sadie

On Monday 12th June two top translators from Rye College travelled to London to represent the school at the Southern Regional Final of the National Foreign Language Translation Bee.

This is a new national competition for students in Years 8 and 9 who are learning French, Spanish or German.  It follows on from the success of the Year 7 Spelling Bee.

All French classes in Year 8 and 9 (over 250 students) at Rye College took part in stage 1, translating phrases aloud from English into French.  Students needed to learn a range of verbs in past, present and future forms, and were marked on accuracy and pronunciation.  Each competitor had one minute to translate as many phrases as possible.

The winners from each class went forward to the whole school stage of the competition, where two clear champions won the chance to go to the next stage in London: Keziah in Year 8, and  Sadie in Year 9.

The two girls trained hard, practising the combinations of words and perfecting their pronunciation.  Mrs Clayton travelled with them to St Paul's Girls' School, where the standard and speed was impressively high.  Keziah had to go first in the whole competition, with Sadie second, which was a bit daunting, but they stepped up to the challenge.  Both competitors did Rye College proud, and enjoyed the whole experience, although on this occasion they did not manage to get through to the national final in Cambridge.

Now our champions will help in training others for next year's competition!