Sean Cotter, „Traducerea literară şi destinul României în comunism. Trei studii de caz: Blaga, Noica, Cioran”, translated and with a preface by Dana Bădulescu, Bucureşti: Humanitas, 2024, 248 p.

Abstract

Sean Cotter, professor of literature and translation studies at the University of Texas at Dallas, is undoubtedly one of the most important international scholars interested in Romanian culture and literature. Dr Cotter is both a scholar with a solid background in comparative literature, proven by his Ph.D. at the University of Michigan, and a versed translator from Romanian. Up to now Dr Cotter gave excellent English equivalents to the works of important Romanian writers, such as Mateiu Caragiale, Nichita Stănescu, Magda Cârneci, or Mircea Cărtărescu. In 2014, Cotter published a monograph entitled Literary Translation and the Idea of Minor Romania at the University of Rochester Press.

Cotter’s study was translated into Romanian by Dana Bădulescu under a new and very well-chosen title:
Traducerea literară şi destinul României în comunism [Literary Translation and Romania’s Destiny in Communism]. This modification facilitates the reception of this work in Romania where some readers might react negatively to a title that they could perceive as a foreign perspective imbued with some hegemonic undertones. Dana Bădulescu is professor at the Faculty of Letters of “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University in Iaşi, Romania and an experienced translator from English into Romanian. Her wide scholarly interests range from British and American modernism and postmodernism to transnationalism and poetics.