Energy industry's biggest shortage? Future executives.

The Christian Science Monitor ^ | December 13, 2005 | Kris Axtman

[LibertarianInExile]

I always thought it'd be a blast to handle that sort of translation...

Up the tree! Toward the fruit they creep!
And to the prestige--just one more leap!
Hundreds of baboons, all climb to the skies,
a terrifying view, that horde of brown eyes!

[GSlob]

OK. That's another quatrain ["Garik"] from him:
The office world is a very strange place
From nine a.m. to six p.m.:
One could encounter [variant: there are] such a**holes
That even legs disdain to grow from them.

[LibertarianInExile]

Replace the first line with:

"The office world is strange and cold,"

And you have a rhyme that still fits the quatrain format and rhymes doubly. I might have put in 'daily grind' instead of 'office world' but I don't know where the idiomatic language is, and I think idiom and description is where you have the most room for flexibility in translation. I think it's inappropriate for translators to draw away from the literal language except where that idiom and description is closer to other wording in meaning in the new language to which the poetry is being translated.

[GSlob]

Idiomatic? - He-he, here's a "garik" by the same author focusing on a play of words for you:
V kontorakh sluzhat sotni dur,
(In offices work [serve] hundreds of female idiots)
Branyashchikh dom, plitu i tryapku.
(Who curse home, kitchen stove and cleaning cloth).
U tekh, kto sluzhit chereschur
(In those who work [serve] too much)
Pererastaet matka v papku
(Uterus grows into an [office] folder)
The play of words here is "uterus" = "matka" [same root as "mother"] and "folder" = "papka" [same root as "papa" = father]

[LibertarianInExile]

Gee, that's a tough literal one...and a tougher idiomatic one without some sort of masculine 'paper' origin in English. Here's a weak attempt:

Women worldwide still foolishly toil
Instead of attempting their role of maternity
Their loving affection instead they embroil
to baby and mother a paperwork eternity