Le Ton Beau De Marot

Douglas Hofstadter has a wonderful book, Le Ton Beau De Marot: In Praise of the Music of Language, ISBN:0465086454, about the practicalities of translating poetry, using a small French poem written in 1537 by Cl&egrave;ment Marot as an example (over and over, different ways by different people).

It is a great book about the patterns of language and translation, and I can highly recommend it because of that, but I also treasure it because Hofstadter typeset the whole thing himself, and spent endless hours rewriting passages to make them set well. I like typesetting, and I love that kind of devotion. :)

NY Times book review of it: http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/07/20/reviews/970720.20altert.html

In a response to that review, Hofstadter wrote, "My book was the telling of a personal exhilaration with language and languages, minds, words, constraints, poetry, creativity, humor, pattern and music."