Omnibus now invites entries (just one per person!) for the 2025 Sam Hood Translation Prize.
The judges are keen to encourage elegant and stylish creative translations from Greek and Latin prose and verse. Try your hand at translating any one of the following passages (verse passages may be translated into either verse or prose, as you consider most appropriate):
Iliad 17.426-49
Sophocles, Antigone 334-64
Thucydides 2.41
Horace, Odes 1.9
Virgil, Georgics 4.499-527
Tacitus, Histories 4.73
Texts of these passages can be found here, but you may use any text that is available to you, provided that you include with your translation a copy of the text you have translated.
The judges will be looking for accuracy but also, and especially, for creativity when making their decisions. The competition is open to anyone under 19, still in full-time pre-university education. Entries must contain a statement from a teacher, containing the teacher’s e-mail address, confirming that this is the case. This statement should be included in the same e-mail that you send to submit your entry, otherwise it will not be entered into the competition
The prize-winner will receive not only a cheque for £75 but also a book of classical poetry.
Entries should be submitted electronically, as e-mail attachments, preferably in Microsoft Word format, to Professor Katherine Clarke (katherine.clarke@st-hildas.ox.ac.uk).
Deadline 7th July 2026.