I've been a fan, if that's the right word, of the writings and works of Douglas Hofstadter since I picked up my first copy of his book Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid at a garage sale in high school. More recently, his collaboration with Emmanuel Sander, Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking, has influenced my understanding and approach to service design and human centered work. (There is, you may have noted, also a connection between that book and yesterday's musings on games and rules.)

But my favorite book of his, by far, is 1998's Le Ton Beau De Marot: In Praise of the Music of Language, an examination of the creative process in the form of poetry translation. Hofstadter established some structural and literal guidelines and then had several friends and colleagues translate a 16th Century French poem. (See the wikipedia entry for a bit more detailed synopsis.)

There are so many things that I could discuss about this book (I could talk with you about it for hours), but what I was thinking about today is how working in the multidisciplinary, complex world of today often involves what amounts to translation. Not of language, per se, but of culture, for example between marketing and engineering or between sales and HR. Of course, the language is often different, or sometimes the same words are used to mean different things.

But it goes beyond the words. Even beyond the meaning of the words. It goes to how those different "cultures" view and think about the world. If an engineer gives a presentation to a group of different departments - say marketing, design, and finance - the same words and images will travel from speaker to listener. But each one will receive a "translation" of that presentation, translated through their knowledge, their experience, so that what they take away from the presentation will be unique to them.

It's worth noting that even other engineers will get not the "original" presentation, but a "translated" version. Maybe a bit closer to the "objective truth" of the original presentation, but unique to them as an individual nonetheless.

Something to keep in mind when you are telling your story, selling your wares. And why understanding, or at least making the effort to understand, others' point of view is so important. So valuable. So meaningful.

Some of this comes from Knowledge in translation, something I wrote in 2007 reflecting on the relationship between translating poetry and understanding the communication challenges of knowledge work.