If you enjoy the idea of discussing how to translate (poetry in particular) I can't recommend enough "le ton beau de Marót" by Douglas Hofstadter of "Godel, Escher, Bach" fame. It explores various approaches to translation, discusses a lot of funny stuff and has a zillion different translations of the same poem, which is pretty entertaining tho it gets boring after a while.
And interestingly enough, the Italian version of GEB contains a pretty horrible, in my opinion, translation of the Jabberwocky, where the monster name is translated as "mascellodonte", which seems academic and dinosaur-like rather than fantastical as the English one.
- bōkin is a play on mōkin (猛禽) which refers to a fierce bird of pray. I replaced mō (猛) which refers to severity, extremity, ferocity with bō (暴): violence, force, to create a new word.
Other notes:
見ぐれ (migure) is supposed to evoke twilight by association with みる (miru, seeing) and 夕暮れ (yugure): twilight. So that gives us the counterpart for "brillig".
にょば (nyoba) is a onomatopoeia similar to nyoronyoro: wrigg.
みずんが (mizunga) is a portmanteau of mizu + unga (water + canal). That gives us a made-up word that evokes some kind of wetland setting corresponding to "wabe".
ごろぐーんと(gorogūn-to) an invention that hopefully evokes gorogoro: heavily rolling. This is our "gyre and gimble".
ボロゴーン (borogōn) is inspired by borogove.
見ま目ま (mimamema) is our "mimsy". 目眩 (memai) means dizzy.
ネズモン (nezumon) is from nezumi: mouse. This gives us "mome rath".
奪い狩る (ubaigaru) is a made-up compound nouned verb: 奪う (ubau) is to snatch, steal. 狩る is "to hunt". E.g. 魔女狩り (majogari): witch hunt. This is our "outgrabe" candidate.
Made up words: 狡骨 (kōkotsu) is a pun on 狡猾 (kōkatsu: sly, cunning crafty) by sound and kanji similarity. 骨 means bone. For some reason I decided to equate "frumious" with "cunning". Juketsuki also a made-up word inspired by 吸血鬼 (kyūketsuki), vampire.
--
呪鋭剣を持って
敵を物色して
タムタム木の樹影で
暫く思考してた。
--
Juei tsurugi-o motte,
kataki wo busshoku shite,
Tamtam ki no juei de,
shibaraku shikō shiteta.
--
Holding to "cursharp" sword,
searching high and low for the foe,
in the shadow of the Tamtam tree,
thought for a while.
--
Did not work in "manxome" unfortunately.
However, there is a nice pun between the made up word "juei" 呪鋭 and a real word "juei" 樹影.
呪 (ju) refers to being cursed, and 鋭 (ei) to sharpness. The vorpal sword is magically enchanted so that it is always sharper than sharp. (That seems to be the interpretation of "vorpal" in the world of D&D, which can be taken as authoritative, haha).
This juei: 樹影 is the shadow of a tree. Not exactly shade, so there is a liberty being taken here. Shade is more like 日陰 (hikage) "tamtam-no hikage de" works and scans, but that pun thing is lost.
It reminded me a lot of the time I watched Beavis and Butt-Head on MTV in amazement in an Izakaya in Kanazawa. It boggled my mind that someone could translate the clever vulgarities and the double entendres (often enough) into Japanese. Truly a labor of love.
I find this a bit of an odd example, but maybe I am completely preoccupied by translations of technical texts, where clarity is important and staying exact at the same time. I've hardly come across words that were so foreign and weird that you'd be thinking very long if the "normal translation" was ok. This poem especially seems to be an exercise in crypto linguistics, most of the time trying to figure out the original meaning first, and then finding some
fitting translation, with a task that seems more like writing a poem on your own and less "translation". But as I said, maybe it's me thinking about howtos and manuals.
Disclaimer: I have no professional experience as a translator, just a software developer who writes READMEs and technical documents in German (native) and English and has also translated stuff in the past.
And interestingly enough, the Italian version of GEB contains a pretty horrible, in my opinion, translation of the Jabberwocky, where the monster name is translated as "mascellodonte", which seems academic and dinosaur-like rather than fantastical as the English one.