The afternoon of Friday 10th May saw 24 Year 10 pupils from schools across East Sussex, West Sussex and Kent take part in a ‘knock-out’ tournament for Latin translation at the Abbey. Visiting schools included: Ardingly, Burgess Hill, Cranbrook, Hurst, Judd, King’s Canterbury, Sevenoaks, and TOGS. Although our schools compete against each other on the sports field, and whilst there are Olympiads in maths, science and linguistics, there are no inter-school competitions for Latinists. So running and hosting a Latin tournament was Battle Abbey’s informal and fun initiative to fill that gap. There were three rounds, all set by Battle Abbey’s Head of Classics, Nicky Bishop. All contestants took part in round one which required them to translate some really tough Latin sentences into English. The top 12 went on to round two, which involved translating a tricky passage of Latin into English. Then, in the final round, the top 6 scorers had to translate English sentences into Latin – widely regarded as a challenging task! The visiting Latin teachers did lots of high-speed marking, while the pupils enjoyed the sunshine on the Terrace and our Catering Team’s fabulous brownies and doughnuts. Henry J and Oliver S represented Battle Abbey School, and only just missed out on places in the final. This was a brilliant achievement considering they have been learning Latin for only 3 years and have just two hours of Latin lessons each week. The winner of the individual prize was Corinne from TOGS, who chose a beautiful edition of the Aeneid for her prize. The winning team comprised Corinne and her team-mate Emily from TOGS, with the Cranbrook team a close second. Both teams won hardback books on Ancient Rome for their schools. The pupils and teachers all had a chance to get to know each other and swap contact details. So although the afternoon was pretty intense, everybody agreed they had had a great time.
