Tahela’s founder, Riina, discovered a passion for languages at a young age and has since learned and mastered nine of them! Her first love was for Romance languages, studying and then teaching Spanish, Portuguese, and French in various language schools and at the University of Tartu in Estonia. After translating a number of books from these languages into Estonian a new-found interest in her native tongue was sparked and led her to pursue lecturing in Estonian Language and Culture in the universities in Estonia, Ukraine, Germany and France.
Currently, Riina is teaching Estonian Language and Culture at the INALCO University in Paris and also works as a freelance linguist providing online tuition and Estonian language services. She is currently studying for a PhD in Finno-Ugristics at the University of Vienna specialising in gender expression in the Estonian Language. She continues her work as an acknowledged translator, introducing Spanish, Portuguese, English, and Ukrainian literature into Estonian and in 2018 she was awarded the Translation of the Year Prize from the journal Akadeemia for a translation of short stories by Ukrainian contemporary author Serhiy Zhadan.