Lidia Vianu
Lidia Vianu is a Romanian academic, writer, and translator. She is a professor in the English department of the University of Bucharest, a writer of fiction and poetry, and a translator both from English into Romanian, and from Romanian into English.
Biography
Her mother, Beatrice Vianu, was an editor, and her father, Theodor Vianu, was a doctor. She attended both high school and university in Bucharest. She graduated from the department of English at the University of Bucharest. She defended her doctoral dissertation in 1978, with a thesis titled Philosophical Lyricism in the works of T.S. Eliot and Paul Valéry. After the fall of communism, she was granted two Fulbright Scholarships, and taught in the United States, at State University of New York – Binghamton and University of California, Berkeley. She became a professor in the University of Department English department in 1998.Vianu learned English from Leon Levițchi, Dan Duțescu, and C. George Sandulescu. She published English with a Key, a handbook that aims to teach English to Romanians through translation.
Vianu founded the Centre for the Translation and Interpretation of the Contemporary Text at the University of Bucharest.
Work
As an academic, Vianu is the author of numerous essays, anthologies, interviews, and books of literary criticism. Most of them were written in English, while some were also published in Romanian. Her major subjects in English Studies are T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, and contemporary British poets and novelists.As a writer, she published Censorship in Romania at Central European University Press, a novel, and three volumes of poetry.
She has published English translations of Eugen Simion's The Return of the Author, Marin Sorescu's The Bridge, Mircea Dinescu's The Barbarians’ Return,
She also published a large number of translated books in Romania.
Vianu and Sorkin's translation of Marin Sorescu's The Bridge, was awarded the Prize of Poetry Society, London, 2005.
Selected works
Literary criticism
Scenarii lirice moderne , Ed. Universității București, 1983T. S. Eliot: An Author for All Seasons, Bucharest: Ed. Paideia, 1997Censorship in Romania, Central European University Press, 1998British Literary Desperadoes at the Turn of the Millennium, Bucharest: Ed. ALL, 1999Alan Brownjohn and the Desperado Age, Ed. Universității București, 2003The Desperado Age: British Literature at the Start of the Third Millennium, Ed. Universității București, 2004Desperado Essay-Interviews, Ed. Universității București, 2006Translations
- Joseph Conrad: Oglinda mării, Timișoara: Ed. Amarcord, 1994
- Eugen Simion: The Return of the Author, translated into English for Northwestern University Press, Evanston, IL, 1996
- Marin Sorescu: The Bridge, co-translated with Adam J. Sorkin for Bloodaxe Books, 2004
- Mircea Ivănescu, Lines Poems Poetry, University of Plymouth Press, 2009, co-translated with Adam J. Sorkin
- Ioan Es Pop, No Way Out of Hadesburg and Other Poems, University of Plymouth Press, 2010, co-translated with Adam J. Sorkin
- Ion Mureșan, The Book of Winter and Other Poems, University of Plymouth Press, 2011, co-translated with Adam J. Sorkin
- Hilary Elfick: A Single Instinct. Unicul instinct. Bucharest: Ed. Integral 2017
- Anne Stewart. Let It Come to Us All. Să vină pentru noi toți. Bucharest: Ed. Integral 2017
- Mircea Dinescu, The Barbarians' Return, Bloodaxe Books, 2018