In his 1869 French rendering of Alice in Wonderland, Henri Bué found a uniquely felicitous way to translate a pun. Here’s the original:

‘If everybody minded their own business,’ the Duchess said in a hoarse growl, ‘the world would go round a deal faster than it does.’

‘Which would not be an advantage,’ said Alice … ‘Just think what work it would make with the day and night! You see the earth takes twenty-four hours to turn round on its axis –‘

‘Talking of axes,’ said the Duchess, ‘chop off her head.’

Bué couldn’t reproduce the pun using the French word for ax (hache), but he came up with this:

‘Si chacun s’occupait de ses affaires,’ dit la Duchesse avec un grognement rauque, ‘le mond n’en irait que mieux.’

‘Ce qui ne serait guère avantageux,’ dit Alice … ‘Songez à ce que deviendraient le jour et la nuit; vous voyez bien, la terre met vingt-quatre heures à faire sa révolution.’

‘Ah! vous parlez de faire des révolutions!’ dit la Duchesse. ‘Qu’on lui coupe la tête!’

In The Astonishment of Words, Victor Proetz writes, “Here Bué — with a stroke of wizardry and judgment which, in this instance, is not translation by word, but translation by change of word — has instantaneously transformed a witty English idea in its entirety into a perfectly parallel, equally witty French idea. And when ‘the Duchess’ changes into ‘la Duchesse,’ the axe, by association, becomes a guillotine.”