Rami Saari is an Israeli poet, translator, linguist and literary critic.

Biography

Saari studied Semitic and Uralic languages

Uralic languages

The Uralic languages constitute a language family of some three dozen languages spoken by approximately 25 million people. The healthiest Uralic languages in terms of the number of native speakers are Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian, Mari and Udmurt...

 at the Universities of Helsinki

Helsinki

Helsinki is the capital and largest city in Finland. It is in the region of Uusimaa, located in southern Finland, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, an arm of the Baltic Sea. The population of the city of Helsinki is , making it by far the most populous municipality in Finland. Helsinki is...

, Budapest

Budapest

Budapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...

 and Jerusalem. He did his PhD in linguistics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Hebrew University of Jerusalem

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem ; ; abbreviated HUJI) is Israel's second-oldest university, after the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. The Hebrew University has three campuses in Jerusalem and one in Rehovot. The world's largest Jewish studies library is located on its Edmond J...

. His doctoral thesis, "Maltese Prepositions", was published in 2003 by Carmel Publishing House. Saari has published eight books and translated several dozen books, prose and poetry, from Albanian

Albanian language

Albanian is an Indo-European language spoken by approximately 7.6 million people, primarily in Albania and Kosovo but also in other areas of the Balkans in which there is an Albanian population, including western Macedonia, southern Montenegro, southern Serbia and northwestern Greece...

, Catalan

Catalan language

Catalan is a Romance language, the national and only official language of Andorra and a co-official language in the Spanish autonomous communities of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and Valencian Community, where it is known as Valencian , as well as in the city of Alghero, on the Italian island...

, Estonian

Estonian language

Estonian is the official language of Estonia, spoken by about 1.1 million people in Estonia and tens of thousands in various émigré communities...

, Finnish

Finnish language

Finnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland Primarily for use by restaurant menus and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a...

, Greek

Greek language

Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

, Hungarian

Hungarian language

Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....

, Portuguese

Portuguese language

Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...

 and Spanish

Spanish language

Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

.

In 2002-2006, Saari was the national editor of the Israeli pages of the poetry website www.poetryinternational.org.

Awards and honors

• In 1996 and 2003, Saari was awarded the Prime Minister’s Prize for Literature.
• In 2006, he received the Tchernichovsky Prize
  Tchernichovsky Prize
  The Tchernichovsky Prize is an Israeli prize awarded to individuals for exemplary works of translation into Hebrew. It is awarded by the municipality of Tel Aviv-Yafo. Although initailly awarded annually, it is now awarded every two years....
  
   for exemplary translation.
• In 2010, he was awarded the Asraf Prize of the Academy of the Hebrew Language
  Academy of the Hebrew Language
  The Academy of the Hebrew Language was established by the Israeli government in 1953 as the "supreme institution for scholarship on the Hebrew language."-History:...
  
  for his contribution to the enrichment of Hebrew literature.

Published works (Hebrew)

• Behold, I've Found My Home (poetry), Alef, 1988 [Hine, macáti et bejtí]
• Men at the Crossroad (poetry), Sifriat Poalim, 1991 [Gvarím ba cómet]
• The Path of Bold Pain (poetry), Schocken, 1997 [Maslúl ha keév ha noáz]
• The Book of Life (poetry), Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2001 [Ha séfer ha xaj]
• So Much, So Much War (poetry), Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2002 [Káma, káma milxamá]
• The Maltese Prepositions (doctoral thesis), Carmel, 2003 [Milót ha jáxas ha Maltézijot]
• The Fifth Shogun (poetry), Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2005 [Ha šogun ha xamiší]
• Rings of the Years (poetry), Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2008 [Tab'ót ha šaním]

External links

• http://library.osu.edu/projects/hebrew-lexicon/00198 Modern Hebrew Literature
• http://israel.poetryinternationalweb.org/piw_cms/cms/cms_module/index.php?obj_id=7238&x=1 Israeli domain at Poetry International
• http://www.israel-sheli.info/rami_saari.htm Israel Sheli - A Catalan web-site about Israel