Perevod i detskoe dvujazyčie: opyt konkursa “Kul’turnyj Most” v Italii

Translation activity has a favorable effect on the cognitive development of children, especially bilingual children who get used to speaking two languages in everyday communication. This activity is natural for them from the beginning, but with suitable training, it can lead to a conscious differentiation of the two languages and contribute to a balanced bilingualism and better bilingual competence. This paper defines the role of translation not only as a spontaneous bilingual acquisition activity (natural translation), but also as a form of learning to improve a child's bilingual competence (educational translation). Participating as a jury in the "Cultural Bridge" competition in Italy, I collected a very rich material to study the difficulties of translation in Russian-speaking children living in Italy. This experience showed that natural translation is not sufficient to develop the translation competence in bilinguals, while educational translation could help them develop the meta-linguistic function, the main one to improve their level of bilingualism. Unlike other works of mine on the subject, here the work provides a rich list of examples divided on different linguistics levels.