Translation is a complex art. You might want a translation to:

• clearly indicate the words and grammatical structures of the original. This kind of translation is useful for people who have some skill in the original language and are trying to fine-tune their language skills.
• clearly indicate the informational content of the original without overly worrying about mimicking the grammatical structure of the original. This kind of translation is suitable for technical documents and newspaper and magazine articles.
• reinterpret the original for a specific target audience in such a way as to catch its emotional content, which is the approach you want to use for poetic translations.

This topic came to mind recently when I ran across a blog entry from the Director of the Vladimir Bakanov School of Translation, in which he cited a poem by Агния Барто, a Russian author of children's poetry whom I had never read before. Judging from this first example, she was talented. I decided to try to produce a translation of the poem for American children. Before I show that translation, I'll adduce the poem along with a fairly close word-for-word translation. And then I'll give you a more poetic interpretation.

When you reinterpret a poem, you hope to first of all produce the overall meaning of the original. That's a minimum. Then you attempt to reproduce the emotion of the original, which is tricky because conflicting cultural values may mean that what's emotionally important in the source culture is not as important (or worse yet, emotionally important in a different way) in the target culture. If you can do those two things, then you have a good a translation. And if you can throw in some relatively non-essential aspects like rhyme scheme or rhythm in addition to those other two, then you have a very good translation.

My translation below has one important modification: I have replaced the New Year imagery with Christmas imagery since the latter is the more important winter holiday for most Americans. The poem also reproduces the rhyme scheme of the original, though not the rhythmic structure. Feel free to comment on the translation's inadequacies.

Months long before the springtime thaw
A pine stood 'neath the winter's gray.
Nearby within a snowy draw
The hungry wolves would prowl for prey.

One winter's night when all was calm,
When no one would expect it least,
Ten bunnies and their bunny mom
Perchanced across one hungry beast.

In the month of Santa Claus
No hare would ever care to be
Consumed by such ferocious jaws,
So they jumped into that lone pine tree.

Those bunnies who had no defense
Just hung like Christmas ornaments.

Ten bunnies hung without a word
Where only snowflakes could be heard.
They tricked the wolf so thoroughly,
Quite long before the springtime thaw,
The only thing he thought he saw
Was a decorated Christmas tree.

(Translation © 2008 Donald E. Livingston, Jr.)