Strange Loops of Translation

One of the most exciting theories to emerge from cognitive science research over the past few decades has been Douglas Hofstadter's notion of strange loops from <i>Gödel Escher Bach</i> (1979). Hofstadter is also an active literary translator who has written about translation perhaps most notably in his 1997 book <i>Le Ton Beau de Marot</i> where he draws on his cognitive science research. And yet he has never considered the possibility that translation might itself be a strange loop.<br/><br/>In this book Douglas Robinson puts Hofstadter's strange-loops theory into dialogue with a series of definitive theories of translation in the process showing just how cognitively and affectively complex an activity translation actually is.