Speaker: Tal Cohen, Google

Title: Gödel, Escher, Bach: Adventures in Translation

Abstract:
Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid was originally published in 1979, and almost immediately won great critical acclaim, a Pulizer for nonfiction writing, and cult status in some communities as diverse as musicians and computer programmers. The book deals with a myriad of topics and presents a fascinating challenge to readers; but its linguistic playfulness presents an even greater challenge to translators. It was considered to be "untranslatable" for a long time, yet by now it was translated to over a dozen languages. In this talk, we discuss the book in general: what is it really about, and how well did the book and the theory it presents withstand the test of time. We then discuss our own translation of the book to Hebrew, an undertaking that lasted for nearly 16 years, was recently published by Dvir (a Kinneret-Zmora-Bitan label), and have reached a best-seller status in Israel.