Douglas R. Hofstadter's book Le Ton beau de Marot, In Praise of the Music of Language is built around 88 different translations of a poem by the sixteenth-century French poet Clément Marot. The full title of the poem is "A une Damoyselle malade".
For copyright reasons I'd better not quote any of the translations, but here is the original French poem:
Ma mignonne
Je vous donne
Le bon jour
Le séjour
C'est prison.
Guérison
Recouvrez,
Puis ouvrez
Votre porte
Et qu'on sorte
Vitement
Car Clément
Le vous mande.
Va, friande
De ta bouche,
Qui se couche
En danger
Pour manger
Confitures;
Si tu dures
Trop malade,
Couleur fade
Tu prendras,
Et perdras
L'embonpoint.
Dieu te doint
Santé bonne,
Ma mignonne.
Early in the book, Hofstadter challenges the reader to write his or her own translation of Ma Mignonne into English "or better yet, your native tongue". Here's my first attempt at a translation into Hebrew, which is certainly in some sense my native tongue, though not the one I grew up speaking.
בַּת עֵינָי,
בִּרְכוֹתָי
אֶתְּנָה.
אֲסוּרָה
בְבֵיתֵךְ
בְּרִיאוּתֵךְ
תִּלְבְּשִׁי,
וּפִתְחִי
אֶת דַּלְתֵּךְ
בְּצֵאתֵךְ
חִישׁ מַהֵר
לֶחָבֵר
הַמְּצַוֶּה.
אֶת הַפֶּה
שֶזָּלַל
וְנָפַל
לַמִּשְׁכַּב
בְּסַחלָב
תְּמַלְּאִי.
אִם תַּחְלִי
זְמַן אֲרוֹךְ
מַאֲרוֹךְ
תְּדַמִּי
וְתִהְיִי
לְבָנָה.
רְפָא נָא
אֲדֹנָי
בַּת עֵינָי.
Elsewhere, Hofstadter provides a list of "formal properties" of the original poem, as follows:
The poem is 28 lines long.
Each line consists of three syllables.
Each line's stress falls on its final syllable.
The poem is a string of rhyming couplets: AA, BB, CC,...
Midway, the tone changes from formal ("vous") to informal ("tu").
The poem's opening line is echoed precisely at the very bottom.
The poet puts his own name directly into his poem.
I preserved most of these in the Hebrew translation. The first 3 and the last but one are straightforward, with an occasional license in counting a syllable with the short Hebrew vowel sheva na` sometimes as a syllable (et'na) and sometimes not a syllable (briutekh, hamtzavve). The rhymes are a bit loose here and there, and I couldn't find a way to match the change from vous to tu. And as for finding a rhyme for "Clément" in Hebrew...! I like to think I've gone some way towards capturing the rather whimsical tone of the original, too.