It’s almost impossible to translate poetry, because poetry is just a collection of words that sound good together and mean something. That's why you don't often see it, just the poem in its original language and then a paraphrase of that. It's also why the Quaran isn't really the Quaran and just a translation of the Quaran if it's been translated.
It’s all about word choice, whether to convey imagery, sound good, or establish rhythm. This puts the translator in an almost impossible situation, having to decide which of these the ‘word conveys’ is more important. Translated poetry can still be good, but it’s not nearly as powerful as the original language version. A word can convey anything it conveys, and if you put even the closest synonym in the foreign language as that word, it still conveys completely different things. The longest poem I've seen translated was less than a page long. Translation of poetry only works in, like, haiku, or something.
Translating a novel is hard enough, but a poem? The ultimate test of a translator’s skill. He must know the flow, the grain of both languages intimately. Like a sculptor whittling away the excess marble, clay or wood, he must know which words not to put, even though it may be tempting to put another word. There may be one word that is almost exactly right, conveying everything the original word did and more, but it doesn't fit the meter or scheme. Does he wrap the other words around this word, changing them so that this fits? Or can he use a word that is almost the same thing, conveying something slightly different but more or less similar to the original word? There are all sorts of meanings and connotations in the words we use. Is it enough to use a word that is almost good, meaning almost the same thing?
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