Having "translated" a book of Urdu ghazals in college, I feel weirdly positioned to comment.

First, there are a ton of opinions about what it means to translate poetry, but it certain is transformative and there isn't any point in avoiding that. It becomes a series of decisions about what to retain, what to discard and even what to elevate or create.

Many people think "adding" anything is counter to the goal of translation, but what is the goal? You can read a transliteration and understand concepts, you can read various translations and triangulate meaning, you can speak the original language and grow up with the author (or be the author!) And none of it will help produce an accurate translation.

So what's the goal? To transmit some germ of the source material, to my thinking. Haikus are equally (or even moreso) impossible. What gets missed in most haiku translation is the turn of phrase, where a single word can hold two meanings in balance. Without it. A fundamental aspect of haiku is simply not there. Yet people still read translated haikus.

For me, I dropped the rhyming scheme completely. Yes, you lose musicality and the rhythm of poem. But you can better maintain the concepts and emotion and not have to fight against the boundaries of the language.