I was thinking of translating some poems I wrote from english to spanish. Many of the verses rhyme in english and I wonder how meaningful or enjoyable the poems will be once translated to spanish and the verses no longer rhyme. Any thoughts?

Question

Translating poetry from english to spanish that will cause loss of rhyme.

Answer 1

It's really up to you as the translator. You could translate pretty literally which, yes, would cause a loss of rhyme, but if you feel the rhyme is really important then you could do a looser translation where you translate the ideas, but not necessarily word-for-word, which might give you the opportunity to keep some of that rhyme. Since you're the author, that means you have even more license than any other translator would, so do whatever you feel would best communicate what you originally intended.