ProZ.com translation contests »
First ProZ.com Translation Contest 2007: "First ProZ.com Translation Contest 2007"

Preparing
Submission phase  
Feb 1 '07Feb 13 '07
Hybrid phase  
Finals phase  
Feb 12 '07Feb 20 '07

About the Submission phase

During the Submission phase, entries may be submitted in any language pair, per contest restrictions. Contestants are allowed to edit their entries until the end of the Submission phase.

At the end of the Submission phase, all language pairs with submitted entries will be "paused" for review by the contest administrator.

About the Hybrid phase

During the Hybrid phase, individual language pairs can be placed in any of the Submission, Qualification, or Finals phases, depending on how many entries have been submitted.
  • Pairs which received fewer than 3 entries during the Submission phase will likely be placed in an "extended submission" period. If at least 3 entries are eventually submitted, the pair will be moved forward to the Finals phase.
  • Pairs which received between 3 and 7 entries will likely be placed directly into the Finals phase, where site users who list that language pair in their profile may vote for what they feel are the best entries.
  • Pairs which received more than 7 entries will likely be placed into the Qualification phase, where site users rate and tag entries in an effort to determine a smaller pool of entries which should move forward into the Finals phase.

About the Finals phase

During the Finals phase, all language pairs which have received at least 3 entries will be open for site users to vote for what they feel are the best entries. Pairs with fewer than 3 entries will not be able to have a winner determined.

At the end of the Finals phase, votes will be tallied by site staff, and winners in each pair will be announced.
Competition in this edition of ProZ.com translation contests is finished. Winners have been announced in 15 language pairs. Click here to view the winners »

Thanks to all participants for being brave and trying your hand at this our first official contest.

Congratulations to all of you, especially to the winners!
You will find them below, as well as links to all language pairs that had qualified entries.


Source text

The following are the source texts for this edition of the ProZ.com translation contests. Contest participants are given the opportunity to submit translations of these texts into the languages of their choice. If three or more translators translate a text into a given language, the contest is "on" in that language pair. To learn more about the source texts, see the "About the source text" section below.
English
When she moved into his tiny house in Stroud, and took charge of his four small children, Mother was thirty and still quite handsome. She had not, I suppose, met anyone like him before. This rather priggish young man, with his devout gentility, his airs and manners, his music and ambitions, his charm, bright talk, and undeniable good looks, overwhelmed her as soon as she saw him. So she fell in love with him immediately, and remained in love for ever. And herself being comely, sensitive, and adoring, she attracted my father also. And so he married her. And so later he left her - with his children and some more of her own.

When he'd gone, she brought us to the village and waited. She waited for thirty years. I don't think she ever knew what had made him desert her, though the reasons seemed clear enough. She was too honest, too natural for this frightened man; too remote from his tidy laws. She was, after all, a country girl; disordered, hysterical, loving. She was muddled and mischievous as a chimney-jackdaw, she made her nest of rags and jewels, was happy in the sunlight, squawked loudly at danger, pried and was insatiably curious, forgot when to eat or ate all day, and sang when sunsets were red. She lived by the easy laws of the hedgerow, loved the world, and made no plans, had a quick holy eye for natural wonders and couldn't have kept a neat house for her life. What my father wished for was something quite different, something she could never give him - the protective order of an unimpeachable suburbia, which was what he got in the end.

The three or four years Mother spent with my father she fed on for the rest of her life. Her happiness at that time was something she guarded as though it must ensure his eventual return. She would talk about it almost in awe, not that it had ceased but that it had happened at all.

About the source text

The source texts for ProZ.com translation contests are typically selected by ProZ.com members with a goal of providing interesting and challenging material that enables top translators to show their talent.

To ensure a fair competition, efforts are made to avoid texts for which published translations exist. If you know of the existence of a published translation of any of these source texts into any language, please notify the site staff with a support request.

The views expressed in these texts should not be considered representative of the views of either ProZ.com staff members or the members of the ProZ.com community who have selected the texts.