Jabberwocky

: For other uses of the name Jabberwocky, see Jabberwocky (disambiguation).

Translations

"Jabberwocky" has become famous around the world, with translations into many languages, including Spanish, German, Latin, French, Italian, Czech, Hungarian, Russian, Bulgarian, Japanese, and Esperanto. The task of translation is the more notable and difficult because many of the principal words of the poem were simply made up by Carroll, having had no previous meaning. What the translators have done with the invented words, it appears, is to make up words of their own that have a minimal Levenshtein distance (up to homophones) from Carroll's, while respecting the morphology of the language to be translated into. Both the original and the invented words echo actual words in the lexicon, but not necessarily ones with similar meanings. Nonetheless, the overall spirit of the poem is preserved. Example translations of the first stanza are:

Related Topics:
Spanish - German - Latin - French - Italian - Czech - Hungarian - Russian - Bulgarian - Japanese - Esperanto - Levenshtein distance - Homophone - Morphology - Lexicon

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