How to rhyme (押韻) when translating poetry? I found the following traslation of Psalm 1:3-4 of the Bible amazingly elegant:


  譬彼林木、植於溪旁、隨時結果、其葉青蒼、百事允臧、維彼惡者、猶之粃糠、爲風飄揚。
  
  English (KJV): And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of
  water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also
  shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper. The ungodly
  are not so: but are like the chaff which the wind driveth away.


To me the Chinese translation from Hebrew gives much more aesthetic pleasure. I guess part of the reason is 押韻(rhyme). In general, is there any guideline on how to rhyme when translating poetry?
Actually, we use &quot;rhyme book&quot; that divides commonly used characters into different rhyme. There are two popular rhyme books nowadays: 平水韵 for ancient rhyme and 中华新韵 for modern rhyme. Here is a link to an electronic copy of 平水韵.
In the translation you post, there are four characters in each line. Because many Chinese characters express similar meanings, you could choose one character that rhyme with other lines. In your example, it is the character &quot;旁&quot; in the line “植於溪旁”.
Since ancient Chinese grammar is extremely flexible, you could almost always position that character in rhyme (旁) at the end of the sentence, and the sentence can still make sense with some rearrangements. For example, let's assume that 旁 does not rhyme with others but 溪 does, then we can rearrange the sentence into &quot;植木傍溪&quot;, and then 溪 is at the end this time.
In sum, you can almost always translate a foreign literature into Chinese poetry due to the flexibility of the Chinese grammar and the flexible meaning of each ancient Chinese character.
By the way, the aesthetic elegance does not comes with the rhyme alone. You could also learn the 格律.