Dr. Sean Cotter MA’98, professor of literature and translation studies in the Harry W. Bass Jr. School of Arts, Humanities, and Technology at The University of Texas at Dallas, was honored with the 2024 Dublin Literary Award for his work translating Romanian author Mircea Cărtărescu’s novel Solenoid to English.
The Dublin Literary Award has recognized excellence in literature since 1996. Each year, librarians from around the world nominate works of fiction for consideration. The author is given a prize of 100,000 euros, or about $108,000. If the winning novel is translated to English, the author receives 81,000 euros (about $88,000) and the translator 25,000 euros (about $27,000).
For Cotter, the honor is “special for two reasons: It considers original works alongside translations, and it recognizes the translator’s contribution to the novel,” he said.
He initially resisted taking on the project.
“It’s silly now, but it seemed like it would take too long and demand a large emotional investment,” said Cotter, who is also associate provost for faculty affairs. “I was right on both counts, but I shouldn’t have been afraid.”
The effort took 2½ years, much of which was during the COVID-19 pandemic, with the help of two special companions to motivate him through the process.
“I worked alongside my two daughters at the dining room table quartered off with blue tape,” Cotter said. “Each of us with our headphones on, scowling into our laptops. Little by little, the translated words accumulated, and also little by little, I opened up to the novel’s beauty.”
Cotter and his work have been recognized by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Romanian Cultural Institute and PEN America. He is currently translating a collection of poems, a novel and other works by Cărtărescu.
Solenoid is partially inspired by Cărtărescu’s life as a high school teacher. The author furthers the conversation of the role of life and art within communist Romania in the late 1970s and early 1980s by intertwining fiction with history.
This is a truncated version of an article that originally appeared in the UT Dallas News Center.