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From: rose@sdcsvax.UCSD.EDU (Dan Rose)
Newsgroups: net.books,sci.lang
Subject: Re: books on translation wanted
Message-ID: <2177@sdcsvax.UCSD.EDU>
Date: Thu, 23-Oct-86 22:35:28 EDT
Article-I.D.: sdcsvax.2177
Posted: Thu Oct 23 22:35:28 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 25-Oct-86 05:40:40 EDT
References: <16227@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Reply-To: rose@sdcsvax.UUCP (Dan Rose)
Organization: U.C. San Diego
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Xref: watmath net.books:4335 sci.lang:37
Summary: Hofstadter talks about this

In article <16227@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> citrin@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU.UUCP (Wayne Citrin) writes:
>I'm looking for a good book or books on the philosophical and/or literary
>aspects of translation, particularly the problem of conveying the
>author's style in a translation.  Any recommendations?  Thanks.

Douglas R. Hofstadter (of _Godel,_Escher,_Bach_ fame) has talked
and written about this.  In GEB, he includes translations of
Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky" into French and German and discusses
this.  (How do you translate a "nonsense" poem into another
language, while preserving the connotations of the words?)

Later, he has talked about the difficulties in translating GEB
into other languages.  In one instance, translators botched
an acrostic dialogue -- the first letters of each line were
supposed to spell something, but the translator missed this.
I believe he mentions some of this in his collection of Scientific
American essays, _Metamagical_Themas_.  He also is interested
in such things as translations between languages which have no
distinction between gender and those which do, etc.


-- 
			Dan (not Broadway Danny) Rose
			rose@UCSD