Two Maine West Students honored in Illinois High School Translation Competition

Two Maine West High School students won honors in The Illinois High School Translation Competition, hosted by the European Union Center. A ceremony was held for the students on Dece. 8, at the Italian Cultural Institute in Chicago.

Fifty students across 30 Illinois schools participated in the competition.

Maine West honorees included Ornina Odicho who earned first place in the Swedish-English Division and Orshina Odicho, who earned honorable mention in the Swedish-English Division.

Both Ornina and Orshina translated poetry by Tomas Tranströmer (1931—2015), one of Sweden’s leading poets in his generation, according to the Poetry Foundation of Chicago. Among his numerous prestigious accolades include a Nobel Prize. His work has been translated into more than 50 languages.

“Ornina and Orshina have demonstrated their high level of proficiency in Swedish,” says Rachel Abel, World Languages Department chair at Maine West. “They should be very proud of representing their language abilities at such a renowned level. This is a positive reflection of our multilingual, multicultural community at Maine West, with more than 30 different home languages spoken in Des Plaines. We are fortunate to have so many linguistically talented students in our building.”

The languages in the competition were Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Polish, Swedish and Ukrainian. Across all languages, 12 judges scored the students’ work.