Le Ton beau de Marot

Blurb

Le Ton beau de Marot: In Praise of the Music of Language, published by Basic Books in 1997, is a book by Douglas Hofstadter in which he explores the meaning, strengths, failings, and beauty of translation.
The book is a long and detailed examination of one short translation of a minor French poem, and through that an examination of the mysteries of translation itself.
Hofstadter himself refers to it as "my ruminations on the art of translation".
The title itself is a pun, revealing many of the themes of the work: le ton beau means ‘the beautiful tone’ or ‘the sweet tone’, but the word order is unusual for French. It would be more common to write le beau ton. A French speaker hearing the title spoken would be more likely to interpret it as le tombeau de Marot; where tombeau may mean ‘tomb’, but also ‘a work of art done in memory and homage to a deceased person’. In a further play on the title, Hofstadter refers to his deceased wife, to whom the book is dedicated, as ma rose, and to himself as ton beau.