Along with such figures as Dante, Shakespeare and Goethe, Pushkin is often ranked as one of the great names in European literature. He undoubtedly deserves this honor.

After all, he laid the foundations of Russian literature and left a wealth of timeless works in a whole range of genres.

And yet, most foreigners are better acquainted with Pushkin's successors than with Pushkin himself. Essentially, this is due to the fact that poetry is such a large part of Pushkin's work and this complicates the translator's work.

Plenty of bad translations of Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy and Turgenev exist, but even if they pale beside the originals, translations of prose usually give the reader some chance to appreciate the author's talent, if only because pure story-telling ability can carry the rest.

But attempting to bring Pushkin to the foreign reader is a thankless task. Most of his major works, such as "Yevgeny Onegin," "Ruslan and Ludmila," and "The Bronze Horseman" were written in verse. The translator not only has to convey the specifically Russian world being described, but also has to tackle the problems of rhyme and meter.

One of the most controversial translations of Pushkin into English is Vladimir Nabokov's translation of "Yevgeny Onegin". As a recognized master of style in both English and Russian, Nabokov would seem to be the ideal translator, but the result has met with a far from unanimous reaction.

Nabokov decided to dispense with rhyme altogether and also produced volumes of commentary to accompany the text. Walter Arndt, another translator of Pushkin, called Nabokov's translation "...the sad ritual murder performed for the purposes of an ever more insatiable lexical necrophilia."

When "Yevgeny Onegin" was translated into French, Ivan Turgenev, who himself had impeccable knowledge of French, wrote ironically that there were indeed brave people in the world.

If Turgenev was skeptical as to the ability of 19th century translators to do Pushkin justice and make him known abroad, present day translators have a harder job again. Novels in verse have lost their past popularity, and poetry has also changed. Modern readers have become used to a lot more freedom and experimentation.

Many translations of Pushkin come out sounding wooden or artificial, people read them and wonder what all the fuss is about. Some go as far as to say that Pushkin is simply not translatable. But the world is not about to learn Russian en masse in order to read Pushkin, and so translations, even if far from perfect, are necessary.

Inevitably, there is plenty of debate about how best to translate Pushkin's works. Translation is all about the art of compromise. Some put faithfulness to the original above all else, with the result that the translations often sound forced and strange to the English ear. Some attempt to keep rhyme and end up distorting the register as a result, using, for example, a lofty word where Pushkin used an everyday one, just so as to make the lines rhyme.

In his younger days, future French president Jacques Chirac also felt inspired to try his hand at translating "Yevgeny Onegin." Who knows, perhaps the experience persuaded him that there were easier undertakings in life and convinced him to change career course.

Today, foreign readers have a wealth of translations to choose from, some better than others. None of them can fully convey Pushkin's language, mood or ideas, just as no translation of say, Shakespeare, will ever be quite the same thing as the original. But for those who really want to become better acquainted with the works of one of Russia's greatest writers, there remains only one solution-to learn the language of the original.