'Twas brillig... really

There are a few genres that are notoriously difficult to translate from one language to another. One of them is poetry, but even more so is nonsense poetry, such as the ingenious work of Lewis Carroll, "Jabberwocky". Nevertheless, some bold translators took up the task of presenting this amusing poem to non-English readers. Difficult? You bet. Did they succeed? I can only judge the Hebrew version (by Rina Litvin) and the Russian version (by E. Orlova and O. Demurova) and the answer is a resounding Yes!
Take a look at the 1st verse of each version...

Jabberwocky (original)

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

גֶּבֶרֵיקָא (Hebrew)

הִבְרִיל כְּבָר, זַחְלָצִים קְלִיחִים
חָגְווּ וְעַגוּ בַּשְּבִילֵל,
מַסִּים הָיוּ הַסְּמַרְלַחִים
וְחֶזְרוֹנִי צִרְלֵל.

Бармаглот (Russian)

Варкaлocь. Хливкие шорьки
Пырялись по наве,
И хрюкотали зелюки
Как мюмзики в мове.

For more translations, parodies and relevant material, look here.

We'll be back after these messages

I was listening to Reshet Bet the other day, and there were two people in the studio, interviewing the founder of the handy Hevre site. The interview went fine until they came to the question of funding. For some reason, they found it quite amusing, that a web-site should pay for its maintenance by way of advertising. There were some nasty remarks along the lines of, "tell me the truth, do you have a rich uncle paying for your activities?". Nevertheless, the Hevre person had nerves of steel and remained polite and firm in his position ("our funding comes from a few ads we're running on our site"). The Reshet Bet guys went on being totally obnoxious up to the point, where any sane person would send them straight to hell. Luckily, towards the end of the hour they became very hurried and admitted that they have to break for commercials...