Maima Grīnberga

Maima Grīnberga (1969) is a translator of Estonian and Finnish literature into Latvian. She has been a member of the Estonian Writers’ Union since 2009. Almost twenty Estonian children’s and young-adult titles are included among her 70 translated works.

Translating children’s literature has been one of the greatest sources of joy and “adult education” in my career. One must be much more inventive and creative with children’s literature than when translating adult literature, on the whole.

There is much I would have missed out on if I hadn’t had the opportunities to wrack my brain when translating Belias’s Ossum-Possum or Piret Raud’s Princess Lulu and Mr. Bones; if I hadn’t cracked tough nuts in Andrus Kivirähk’s Oscar and the Things and Anti Saar’s The Way Things Are with Us. Luckily, Latvia already has a long tradition of translated Estonian literature – our readers and publishers have grown used to it.