Uldis Bērziņš

Who is Uldis Bērziņš?

Uldis Bērziņš is a Latvian poet and translator.

He studied Latvian philology at the University of Latvia and published his first collection of poetry in 1980. Bērziņš studied Turkish in Leningrad University Oriental Studies Department, and also studied in the Asian and African Studies section of Moscow State University, at Tashkent State University, Reykjavik University, as well as in Czechoslovakia, Sweden and other countries.

Bērziņš has taken part in the international Bible translation seminar at the Amsterdam Open University and Lund University forum over questions regarding Koran translations. From 2002 on he has been teaching Turkish at the Modern Languages Department of the University of Latvia.

Bērziņš' poetry has been translated into German, Swedish, Estonian and Lithuanian. In 2009, Bērziņš finished the translation of Quran into Latvian, a fifteen years' work of his.

Awards: Three Star Order, Zinaida Lazda Award, the Baltic Assembly Award and the Spidola Award.

In 2009 and again in 2010 he was named one of the World's 500 most influential Muslims in survey conducted by the Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Center.