Poets are often pretty casual with the rules of language for the sake of their art, but possibly none has pushed the boundaries more than Lewis Carroll, the 19th century author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, whose poems are filled with invented words that consistently pose a challenge to translators seeking to render them in another language.
Consider the first verse of his famous poem, Jabberwocky:
Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
Despite the obvious challenges involved, somehow Jabberwocky has been translated into sixty-five languages, with translators using equivalent nonsense terms of their own invention.
Photo Source: https://classic-literature.co.uk/lewis-carroll-jabberwocky-poem/#google_vignette
