Isis's review
Le Ton Beau De Marot: In Praise of the Music of Language
by Douglas R. Hofstadter
Isis's review
Le Ton Beau De Marot: In Praise of the Music of Language by Douglas R. Hofstadter
Isis's review
rating:
recommended for: translators and lovers of language
This is one of my favorite books ever, and as I just recommended it to someone I thought I'd put it here as well. Hofstadter's examination of translation and transformation taught me that the best translation is not necessarily the most literal one, nor even the one that captures the most exact meaning, and that transformation of text is indeed a creative activity. (Heh - I read this before I even heard of fanfiction!) There are a lot of thoughtful ideas in here about how humans use language - how stories and poems are bigger than just the words in them, how meaning is only one dimension of text. Perhaps it's not as groundbreaking as his "Goedel, Escher, Bach," but it's more approachable for non-computer-science types, I think, and I like it better.
