Oili Suominen is an award-winning Finnish literary scholar and translator. She was born in Pori, Finland, in 1941 and studied German, English and literature in Turku.
After working as language lecturer she began translating literature from German and Swedish into Finnish in 1970. Since then she has translated more than 100 works. These include seven novels by Siegfried Lenz and 14 literary works by Günter Grass (among them a new translation of the “Tin Drum” in 2009) as well as the Brothers Grimm and Christa Wolf’s novel “Medea” from German and works by Tove Jansson and Kerstin Ekman from Swedish.
She received the Finnish State Prize for translators in 1976, 1980, 1988 and 2003, the Mikael-Agricola Prize in 1981, the J. A. Hollo Prize in 1993, was short-listed for the European Aristeion Prize twice and was awarded the Verdienstkreuz am Bande der Bundesrepublik Deutschland and the Pro-Finlandia-Medal in 1999.