AMD 4

Having acquired a book of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's poetry (Goethe was the one who wrote Erlkonig)I thought I'd use a short poem as the subject of my AMD. Below is the German text, and a direct-as-possible translation I found online.

Über allen Gipfeln
Ist Ruh,
In allen Wipfeln
Spürest du
Kaum einen Hauch;
Die Vögelein schweigen im Walde.
Warte nur, balde
Ruhest du auch.

Up there all summits
are still.
In all the tree-tops
you will
feel but the dew.
The birds in the forest stopped talking.
Soon, done with walking,
you shall rest, too.

Simply reading the two side-by-side, it may not feel like the most complex translation ever attempted. Gipfeln, which actually comes up as a verb meaning to culminate in several dictionaries, is used for mountain top, and Wipfeln for tree-top. "Die Vögelein schweigen im Walde" is a simple sentence if one has the vocabulary on hand. The translation in the book, however, is not a literal translation, but it does convey more elegant language. Here's the book's translation:

Now stillness covers
All the hill-tops;
In all the tree-tops
Hardly a breath stirs.
The birds in the forest
Have finished their song
Wait: you too shall rest
Before long.

There are quite a few differences. The first two lines are mostly reversed; stillness is in the first line, while the hill-tops are in the second. The word "dew" is removed from this translation entirely. The sentence about the birds that seemed like an easy translation is different here, too. There's no word for "song" in the German, but the translator stuck it in there anyway. "Warte nur" which closely means "just wait" is translated more directly into "wait" in this translation, while the previous uses "soon" instead.
The takeaway here is that translation need not be literal. Often with schoolwork being literal is helpful, but when dealing with casual conversation, or especially art such as poetry, ideas are more crucial than text. Granted, text and diction is a very important aspect of poetry, but it cannot always translate well. For that reason, the author of the second translation chose to preserve the beauty of the language instead of translating the original text as closely as possible.