The Department of Modern Languages are delighted to announce that second year Hispanic Studies student Alice Cooke has won the ‘Modern Languages translation challenge’. This was a challenge for Modern Languages Hispanic Studies students to translate a song from Spanish into English.
Alice talks about her experience translating the song: “Whilst translating this song, I found it really satisfying that the beginner’s Catalan module that I took at Kent this year had paid off: one of my favourite things about learning languages is the moment when you can read a whole piece of writing in your target language and realise afterwards that you understood it! As Castillian Spanish was the first language I learned (if we’re not counting English), I found that it was difficult to not confuse words that occur in both languages. For example, ‘por’ meaning ‘fear’ in Catalan and ‘for/by’ in Spanish.
Doing short translations like this are very useful, as they put you in the mindset to practice your target language, without being overwhelmingly long.”