Jaana Kapari-Jatta
Jaana Marjatta Kapari-Jatta is a Finnish translator of fiction, best known for her Finnish-language renderings of the Harry Potter novels and supplementary books by J. K. Rowling, including Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. In her translations of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and Quidditch Through the Ages, she used the pseudonym “Kurvaa Aka ”.
Kapari-Jatta has also translated several other English-language authors, like Edgar Allan Poe, Oscar Wilde, and Roald Dahl, into Finnish. Among the awards she has received are the Astrid Lindgren Prize of the International Federation of Translators in 2002 and the Finnish State Prize for Children's Culture in 2007. In 2014 she received the J. A. Hollo Prize for her translation of Virginia Woolf’s book The Death of the Moth and Other Essays. In 2022, she received a honoris causa doctorate from the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Helsinki.
In 2008, she published a fact book, Pollomuhku ja Posityyhtynen, where she discusses translating the Harry Potter novels.
Kapari-Jatta is married and has three children and also grandchildren. She resides in Loviisa, Finland, and in Serekunda, Gambia.