<![CDATA[Song translation is not merely a linguistic process. In order to preserve meaning, affect, and singability across languages, the process must involve an emotional and musical adaptation. Some studies have addressed song translation strategies to meet these requirements, but how musical constraints reshape the emotional representation of grief in translated lyrics remains unexplored. This study investigates how grief is reconveyed from Bahasa Indonesia into English, using the English version Just Missing You of Hanya Rindu as a case study. The focus is to explore how musical constraints lead to adjustments to convey the original meaning and emotion. Adopting a descriptive-qualitative method with textual analysis approach, this study analyses and compares lyrical sequences representing stylistic adaptation both Indonesia and English versions. Using Low’s Pentathlon Principle and pragma-stylistic approach, it analyses the syllable counts, musical phrasing, and rhyme patterns to examine how musical requirements result in meaning negotiation. The analysis shows that musical constraints necessitate the expansion of lines to fit the melody, lexical additions to maintain the original emotion tone, and generalisation to make the expression of grief more accessible to a wider audience. These adjustments lead to pragma-stylistic shifts that maintain musical compatibility and preserve the song’s overall emotional impact through particular expressions of grief. The findings demonstrate that musical constraints limit translation choices and shape the pragma-stylistic representation of emotion in translated songs. Additionally, the findings illustrate the usefulness of Low’s Pentathlon Principle for explaining how translators balance semantic accuracy, emotional expression, and musical constraints.]]>
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