Translating The Jabberwocky

How do you translate gibberish? It turns out that this semantic puzzle has been attempted by many for one of the world’s most widely-published poems, The Jabberwocky by Lewis Carrol.

140 such attempts in 45 languages are indexed here. Each author has a different sent of priorities — such as preserving meter, consonance, rhyme, or linguistic neighborhoods. Even the title is up for interpretation: one French translation calls the creature “Le Jaserosque,” while a Latin American translator chooses “El Guirigayero” (guirigay means both “chaotic uproar” and “gibberish”), illuminating the ways translation can innately alters and augments meaning.