Organizations doing Bible translation all over the world have a common set of translation principles they use. These principles are designed to insure that their translations are accurate, communicate clearly and have the widest possible impact. I thought I would take a look at one of their translation principles:

To preserve the variety of the original. The literary forms employed in the original text, such as poetry, prophecy, narrative and exhortation, should be represented by corresponding forms with the similar communicative functions in the receptor language.

Among other thing, this principle means that poetry should be translated as poetry, not as prose. Even though the Psalms are all poetry, the original Living Bible and some other translations translated them as prose.  Here are links that will show you the difference in Psalm 1 and Isa 53.

The Contemporary English Version takes special care with poetic passage as this explanation of the translation method reveals.

Poetic sections were expected not only to sound good but also to look good. Poetic lines were carefully measured to avoid awkwardly divided phrases and words that run over to the next line in clumsy ways.

It may surprise you to learn that even supposedly undeveloped languages in Africa have a tradition of poetry. A Ghanaian told me of the beauty he experienced when he heard one of the poetic parts of Genesis chanted to drums in the Dagbani language. Chanting to drums is the traditional Dagbani way of performing poetry as writing it down has only come in the last few decades.

A third of the Old Testament is poetry and the New Testament contains some as well. So translating the Old Testament means dealing with poetry. The first step in translating poetry as poetry is to figure out how poetry is structured in the language into which the translators are translating. Many English poems rhyme and/or have a strict meter. A Haiku has a strict structure, but does not rhyme. Hebrew poetry uses parallelism of words and concepts. Other languages use other techniques. Bible translators need to take the time to understand poetry in their language. They might consult a traditional singer, or record one and analyze his or her poetry. They might find that certain kinds of poetry are for specific occasions. For example, there might be a kind only used for bereavement, just like we have dirges. So translators might need to use different poetic styles for poetic passages with different emotional content. A couple weeks of research can yield enough information for years of translating.

Then when they finish, the translators can get local singers or chanters to perform their newly-translated poetry, conveying the full emotional content God put there and thereby comforting, encouraging and transforming.