Translating poems from other languages

Last Thursday night, when I stumbled upon a poem by Pablo Neruda, I was so inspired to write a love poem in Filipino. I was really proud of how emotionally charged my poem was. But when I translated it to English, when I read it aloud, it sounded funny. So when I woke up the morning after, I thought that maybe there’s art behind translating good poems and books into English. I’m thankful that because of them, the translators, I can enjoy the works of Haruki Murakami, Paulo Coelho, and even the works of our very own Jose Rizal. That is why even though I keep on struggling learning new languages like Cebuano, Spanish, or Japanese, I always keep coming back on how to improve my English since I am not a native speaker.