Page "Gödel, Escher, Bach" Paragraph 15

Hofstadter gives one example of translation trouble in the paragraph " Mr. Tortoise, Meet Madame Tortue ", saying translators " instantly ran headlong into the conflict between the feminine gender of the French noun tortue and the masculinity of my character, the Tortoise ".

Hofstadter decided to translate the French character as " Madame Tortue ", and the Italian version as " Signorina Tartaruga ".

Because of other troubles translators might have retaining the meaning of the book, Hofstadter " painstakingly went through every last sentence of GEB, annotating a copy for translators into any language that might be targeted ".