Writing the translation for “Bajka iskierki” was a fairly easy task, but there were a few words that gave me pause.

To begin with, there’s the title: Bajka iskierki. A literal rendering would be “Fairy Tale of the Ember.” But that implies that it’s a fairy tale about some little ember.

Yet it’s not that straightforward, for equally possible is “Fairy Tale of an Ember.”

Ah, those article-less languages give us a fit sometimes when we’re translating them to German or English or Spanish or Greek—any language with “a/an” and “the.”

Is this a “bajka” that the ember told—the only cognitive, communicative ember in the whole ash pit (we’ll return to that later)? Or is it a “bajka” that one of many embers could have told?

“The” gives it more import than “an,” and so I went with the latter.

Next: the question of “bajka.” When to use “fairy tale”�? When to use “story”�? When to use “bedtime story”�? Indeed, when to use “cartoon,”� as in “OglÄ…damy bajkÄ™?” “Little Red Riding Hood” and “Tom and Jerry” would both be called “bajka” in Polish. So all these would be acceptable translations in given circumstances, though the most strict translation is “fairy tale.” But “fairy tale” doesn’t capture the sense of this being something told when little WojtuÅ› is going to sleep, and so I changed it to “bedtime story.”

What about “zgasić“? In common usage, you “zgasi懔 a fire, or a cigerette. Literally, it’s “to die out” — or “to burn out” — or “to be put out”� or “to be extinguished,” — or, more actively, “to extinguish.” But none of these sound very poetic at all — not that “die” sounds any better.

Finally, there’s “popielnik.” “Ash pit”? There’s got to be a better term, but I can’t find it in any dictionary, and I can’t find it on the internet, and I certainly can’t find it in my own head. So I took the liberty of changing it to “the fire’s ashes,”� even though that’s not really what it says.

To translate poetry, one must be a poet — it’s that simple. The translation of poetry is completely unlike the translation of a legal document. With legal translation, you want as nearly as possible to translate every word exactly as it is. There’s no taking license with a legal document.

With poetry, the idea seems to me to be entirely different: read the poem in the original language; then read it again, and again, and again � until you know it almost by heart. Then take a piece of paper and write the same poem in your target language.