"The students are mostly from China’s rapidly expanding middle class and can afford to pay full tuition, a godsend for universities that have faced sharp budget cuts in recent years. But what seems at first glance a boon for colleges and students alike is, on closer inspection, a tricky fit for both."

"这些学生绝大多数来自中国迅速壮大的中产阶级，有能力支付全额学费，对于近年来面临预算削减的高校来说，这真是从天而降的礼物。不过，虽然乍看之下这对高校和学生都有好处，仔细观察起来，却是对双方都复杂和棘手的事。"

Written by Tom Bartlett and Karin Fischer
Translated by: ??

http://cn.nytimes.com/article/education/2012/06/27/c27conundrum/zh-cn/

Thoughts:

• I liked the translation of 'a godsend' into 从天而降的礼物 (literally 'a gift that fell from heaven')
• Another good one: "a tricky fit for both" as 对双方都复杂和棘手的事 (complex and prickly things for both parties).
• 'at first glance' as 乍看之下.

HOT DOG

I have a hot dog for a pet,
The only kind my folks would let
Me get.
He does smell sort of bad
And yet, 
He absolutely never gets
The sofa wet.
We have a butcher for a vet,
The strangest vet you ever met.
Guess we're the weirdest family yet,
To have a hot dog for a pet.

热狗

我的宠物是热狗，
爸妈只准我养
这种狗。
闻起来确实有点臭，
但绝不会尿得沙发
湿透透。
我们的兽医是个屠夫，
没有比他便怪的人物。
说到怪还是我们家最奇怪，
竟然养热狗当宠物。

Poem by Shel Silverstein 
Translation by 鄭小芸

Thoughts:

• I like how the translator used the same line spacing as the original.
• 'He does' translated as 确实 is quite well done. Imagine the reader saying "He does smell sort of bad...", with the emphasis on 'does'. 确实brings this across well. Although . . . now I'm thinking that "He does. . . " feels like the boy is admitting something bad about his pet (kind of like it is hiding 'although' within it), while 确实 doesn't necessarily have this flavor to it...
• 'He never gets the sofa wet' as 绝不会尿得沙发湿透透 is interesting. In English we just say 'wet the bed', 'get the sofa wet' etc - it is not necessary to explicitly state that urination was involved. The Chinese version, on the other hand, states explicitly that "[he] definitely wouldn't/couldn't urinate [and] soak the sofa right through."
• In translating "The strangest vet you've ever met" I feel that in trying to get a rhyme with 'pet' (pet-person 宠物-人物) the translator lost some of the feeling of the original. Saying that "Nobody is stranger than this person" (没有比他更怪的人物) takes the emphasis off of him being the strangest veterinarian one could meet. 
• "Guess we're the weirdest family yet" is very difficult to translate. First of all, how do you translate 'guess' (here it is 'I guess') into Chinese?  And then you have 'yet' at the end of the sentence . . . what to do with this? So the translator chose to write "Speaking of strange, [I guess] our family is the strangest" (说道怪还是我们家最奇怪). To convey the meaning of 'I guess', as far as I can tell the translator used 还是, which literally means 'still' (or 'or'), but in this context does feel quite similar to 'I guess'. For translating 'yet' I think it is the 说到怪 ('speaking of strange') that conveys this word's effect upon the sentence.
• Although the original uses 'strange' and 'weird', the translation only uses one word (奇怪) for both of them. Perhaps it was a way of linking the two lines together (i.e. "Speaking of strange..." in the second of the two lines).