Residency artists and researchers Literature Reita Lounatvuori translator “I’m Reita Lounatvuori, a translator. For this first decade or so of my career I’ve been translating French- and English-language plays to Finnish. My range is fairly flexible: I have translated classics of dramatic literature, and modern dramas across the spectrum from tragedy to farce. Perhaps the best-known authors whose work I’ve translated are Molière, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Tennessee Williams. In the tranquillity of the Saari Residence, in a room that was once occupied by a colonel I put the finishing touches to my translation of David Eldridge’s stage adaptation of Thomas Vinterberg’s film The Celebration (Festen). The main translation piece I worked on at Saari Residence was Emmanuel Bourdieu’s and Frédéric Bélier-Garcia’s philosophical sports comedy Le Mental de l’équipe. My workdays often culminated in the bird tower or on the nearby rocks down by the seashore. Such was the serenity at the Residence that I even wrote a poem there! Reita Lounatvuori worked at the Saari Residence during April and May 2008.