What is your favorite word in any language? Which word do you find most difficult to translate?
mda.
I don’t translate words, but works, authors, “the whole surround.”
Who is your favorite fictional character of all time?
Cide Hamete Benengeli [from Don Quixote de la Mancha].
Who was your first favorite writer, and how old were you when you discovered him or her?
Gary Snyder. I started reading him in college, age 17.
What five books would you want with you if you were stranded on a desert island?
How to Build a Boat from Sand, Being Alone for Dummies, The Oxford English Dictionary, Tristram Shandy, and Opere lui Lucian Blaga.
Which under-translated author do you think deserves wider recognition worldwide?
Is there an over-translated Romanian author?
Do you have a translation philosophy that guides your work?
Several, like a Swiss Army knife. They are held together by two parts (knifemakers call them “scales”): the ideas that translators should pay better attention than any other reader, and that the translator should be at least as creative as the original author.
Which of the translations that you’ve worked on was the most challenging? Why?
All translations are challenging, but we have to admit that any book that has to be translated in less time than the original author had to write it is an unfair challenge. The author had all that help from his language, and when he faced problems, he could make stuff up.
How did you learn your foreign language, and how did you begin working as a literary translator?
I learned Romanian through a Peace Corps training program while living with a family in the transportation industry: the father drove trucks, the mother streetcars, the son a taxi.
If you could have been born in a culture other than your own, which would you choose to be a member of? Why?
Antartica: no people. Think of the possibilities!
If you hadn’t been a translator, what profession would you like to have tried?
Cardsharp.
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Read Sean Cotter’s translation of “Blinding” by Mircea Cărtărescu in Asymptote’s October 2013 issue.
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Sean Cotter has translated several works from Romanian, including Nichita Stănescu’s Wheel with a Single Spoke and Other Poems (Archipelago)—winner of the Best Translated Book Award—Liliana Ursu’s Lightwall, and Nichita Danilov’s Second-Hand Souls. His essays, articles, and translations have appeared in Conjunctions, Two Lines, and Translation Review. He is Associate Professor of Literature and Literary Translation at the University of Texas at Dallas, Center for Translation Studies.