Something I have learned from reading various translations of texts in languages I can't read is that translation and interpreting are not all that straightforward. I think there are at least three ways to translate:
1. A word for word dictionary type translation that isn't all rally all that valuable, and easily misses the point of what was said, and gives no indication of the tone and feel of the message. This is the kind of stuff you get from very poor translation software, where poetry and instructions sound about the same, and are often garbled.
2. The more academic translations where literal meaning is preserved. This is especially good when trying to extract some elements, say from myth. There is a trade-off, as the flavor can be dramatically changed, so heavy notes may be required to really understand a particular section of a piece.
3. I can't think of an appropriate term, so I will just call it artsy. The feel of a piece can be preserved, but you only get the gist of the original piece. Examples of this are translations of poetry that mostly follow the rules used with it in the original language, or those translations of Homer that try to sound fancy and aristocratic, and translations of Hesiod that try to sound more common, or even "country".
Actual linguists or professional translators can probably shed way more light on things like this than someone like me. We sometimes come across some difficulties around here based on things like differences in sentence structure, or different meaning/connotation of translated terms (Edit: see ED's Pyra news posts). Hell, English alone has so many variations that a phrase in a dialect or region may have no meaning in another...none of my immediate relatives are named Robert, and I don't understand why I am told otherwise, or what it has to do with most of the discussions where it comes up.
