30 Niles West students from different language backgrounds and grade levels will be competing to attend University of Illinois’ Translation Day 2013 on Thursday, May 2.

The European Union Center and Center for Translation Studies of University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign are sponsoring this high school competition. Students from across Illinois will be taking an in-school translation, then two winners from each school will be selected to compete against other students at U of I.

“Taking part in this competition is important because it teaches students that translating is a skill beyond Google Translate,” German teacher and organizer of the Niles West team Sara Shuster said.

There are seven languages being represented so far by Niles West students: Polish, Spanish, Romanian, French, Latvian, Greek, and German.

Students will translate a document at school, and then winners will be chosen. The winners will be bused to U of I to translate another document that is of the same level of difficulty across all languages.

“Translation from knowledge brings in more culture than a robot can. Using a translator is just not the same as the thinking process of a human brain,” Shuster said.