What is really amazing about this (and about the whole English translation by Kandel, but the poetry is particularly amazing) is that to me, as a native English speaker, this seems like it was written originally in English--not written originally in Polish and then translated into English.
Oh man. Definitely. It was upon reading this story years ago that I realized just how magical translations of stories could be. Lem's humor is so precise and dependent on wordplay and the puns are non-stop. I have no idea how Kandel (the translator) was able to bridge the gap between two languages that are so different. The English language results are as sharp and precise as anything anything an English speaker might come up with. Possibly better in some instances.
