Gödel, Escher, Bach An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter

In the German version, the droll phrase "er an-zu-denken-fing" oc-

curs; it does not correspond to any English original. It is a playful reversal

of words, whose flavor vaguely resembles that of the English phrase "he

out-to-ponder set", if I may hazard a reverse translation. Most likely this

funny turnabout of words was inspired by the similar playful reversal in the

English of one line earlier: "So rested he by the Tumtum tree". It corre-

sponds, yet doesn't correspond.

Incidentally, why did the Tumtum tree get changed into an "arbre

Te-te" in French? Figure it out for yourself.

The word "manxome" in the original, whose "x" imbues it with many

rich overtones, is weakly rendered in German by "manchsam", which

back-translates into English as "maniful". The French "manscant" also lacks

the manifold overtones of "manxome". There is no end to the interest of

this kind of translation task.

When confronted with such an example, one realizes that it is utterly

impossible to make an exact translation. Yet even in this pathologically

difficult case of translation, there seems to be some rough equivalence

obtainable. Why is this so, if there really is no isomorphism between the

brains of people who will read the different versions? The answer is that

there is a kind of rough isomorphism, partly global, partly local, between

the brains of all the readers of these three poems.

ASU's

An amusing geographical fantasy will give some intuition for this kind of

quasi-isomorphism. (Incidentally, this fantasy is somewhat similar to a

geographical analogy devised by M. Minsky in his article on "frames",

which can be found in P. H. Winston's book The Psychology of Computer

Vision.) Imagine that you are given a strange atlas of the USA, with all

natural geological features premarked-such as rivers, mountains, lakes,

and so on-but with nary a printed word. Rivers are shown as blue lines,

mountains by color, and so on. Now you are told to convert it into a road

atlas for a trip which you will soon make. You must neatly fill in the names

of all states, their boundaries, time zones, then all counties, cities, towns, all

freeways and highways and toll routes, all county roads, all state and

national parks, campgrounds, scenic areas, dams, airports, and so on ...

All of this must be carried out down to the level that would appear in a

detailed road atlas. And it must be manufactured out of your own head.

You are not allowed access to any information which would help you for

the duration of your task.

You are told that it will payoff, in ways that will become clear at a later

date, to make your map as true as you can. Of course, you will begin by

filling in large cities and major roads, etc., which you know. And when you

have exhausted your factual knowledge of an area, it will be to your

advantage to use your imagination to help you reproduce at least the flavor

of that area, if not its true geography, by making up fake town names, fake

populations, fake roads, fake parks, and so on. This arduous task will take

Minds and Thoughts^373