Amir asked Kimberli Mäkäräinen (User:Yupik) if she would be interested in
serving on the language committee. Since I have worked a lot with Kimberli
over the years, especially on the Sámi project that Wikimedia Norge is
working on, we thought it would be a good idea if I introduce her to the
list.
Kimberli is originally from the US, but has lived in Finland for decades,
where she studies for her PhD and works as a professional translator. She
has been a Wikipedia contributor for many many years already, especially
working in the Northern Sámi Wikipedia, but also in several other
languages. In order to get details right I asked her to send me some, and
she had this nice academic introduction ready at hand:
Kimberli Mäkäräinen graduated from the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), USA (BA in Linguistics with
high distinction,
1994), the University of Helsinki (UH), Finland (BA in English Translation,
2015; MA in English Translation, 2016), and is a thesis short of a second
MA in Saami Studies from UH (2016–). Ms. Mäkäräinen has combined her love
of translating legislation, terminology, and the Saami languages in her
PhD, which debates the ease of understanding the terminology used in
Finnish legislation translated into Skolt Saami. Awarded High Distinction
from UIUC for her thesis, A Papyrus in Fayumic Coptic, she is an authorized
translator from Finnish into English, and received an NIAS SUPRA Nordic
Scholarship for her work on translating legislation in multilingual legal
systems involving lesser-resourced languages. Both professionally and
personally, Ms. Mäkäräinen believes everyone should be able to read the
laws affecting their everyday lives in their own language and more
resources should be allocated to allow this to happen. Accordingly, she
advocates through her work for the use of languages ranging from Tundra
Nenets to Zulu in open-knowledge projects like Wikipedia and other
Wikimedia projects, the Helsinki Term Bank for the Arts and Sciences, and
other dictionary and knowledge projects.
I believe Kimberli would make a great addition to the language committee,
and hope you all agree. :-)
--
mvh
Jon Harald Søby