In Kallio upper secondary school I was taught by the legendary Viljo “Ville” Tervonen, who ignited my passion for the Finnish language. It then seemed only natural that I would apply to study Finnish in my hometown, at the University of Helsinki. There I met another significant figure in the field, the author-translator Eila Pennanen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eila_Pennanen), who taught the Finnish translation course. Kristiina Rikman was one of my course mates, and we both discovered that translating was what we wanted to do with our lives. Eila also encouraged us and helped us get started, and we are still on that path.

I understood early on that the most important thing is to produce texts that read like they were originally written in Finnish. The most important tool of a translator is their own mother tongue. Luckily I was a bit of a nerd as a child, spending all of my time reading books. Without the intense reading experiences of my youth and my love for books, the range of language I had exposed myself to would not have been sufficient. I owe a lot of it to my family, as well. My parents were very adept users of Finnish, and we also had domestic help from various areas in Finland, so I got to hear both eastern and western dialects at home from a very early age.

Being able to use your own language well is not enough, however. When I translated my first books I realised that, relative to Finnish, things are expressed completely differently in foreign languages – and that is not all – the whole world is somehow different. I applied, and was accepted, to study English Philology. When we read a famous fantasy book written by Tolkien in our first year tutorial, I had to admit to being its Finnish translator.

It wasn't too long before English culture had drawn me in to the point where I had a set up home from home, as it were, in Oxford, England. And I have been living in two countries since 1986.