Often people are upset to find out that translations make little changes intentionally. The layperson, on cottoning on to this, loves to call the translation "bad" or "terrible" or "way off." That might be - I'm not claiming translations are good by default.

The best illustration of the value of "dynamic translation," which is the kind that consciously changes some details to save the overall intent of the work in the new language and culture, is comedy. Go back a couple thousand years and pick a comedy. Hmmmmm. No... not that one... ah! Let's go with Aristophanes' Clouds. Aristophanes, a social conservative of his day who knew Socrates and Plato personally, was wildly popular because his satirical plays reliably got laughs, and this particular play was well-known enough that it (inadvertently, we hope) led to Socrates' execution. Despite the macabre aura, a translation of Clouds should probably be funny, as we have every reason to believe the original was funny. Now, we all know that in comedy, timing is everything. The smallest detail can hinge, unhinge, or rust over a laugh. So do your tally and weigh it all out! Do you want your Clouds to be funny, or do you want wording that's as close to identical as possible, but unlikely to make you laugh... anywhere... at all? Because both options can be called excellent translations.

Dynamic translation allows tweaking the wording and timing of jokes, the way a comedian might without changing the gist, until they actually make people laugh. A strictly formal translation might try to keep the word order and number of words the same, yet sacrifice the original result: mirth. Neither approach seems inherently better or truer: while the direct kind ("formal translation") seems more intuitively correct, in some instances tweaking can arguably produce a more faithful, not less faithful, translation. Sometimes the spirit of the law and the letter of the law are in conflict, and following the letter would actually be incorrect.

If you read a good example of each kind of translation, footnotes and introductory essays too, that's about as close to putting on 3D glasses and seeing the real, deeply authentic meaning as possible. People often daydream about learning a language (or they even do) to read a work they love in the original, so they can get the true experience. The funny thing about that, though, is that you're highly unlikely to master the language enough to get more from the original than from the "stereoscopic" approach above. Oh, you may understand most or all of the words if you're advanced enough, but unless you live in that language for years, you'll lose lots of nuance without realizing it. You may even feel qualified to poo-poo well-known translations for their departures (or "departures" sometimes); sometimes the problem will be your lack of expertise in the language and knowledge of how translation works.

What you do get from reading the original is a feel for it that can't be put into words. You taste the author's stylistic brew directly. This is their own breath. The aroma, the sound, will be much different. At the same time, you might want to remember that it also feels much different to you than it felt to the author and the original readers - the strange qualities of the language are at the forefront of your mind, while they were far at the back of the original minds most of the time. The intentional and perceived art will have been in patterns that you aren't experienced enough to notice as unique to the author; you have little to no way to know the difference between the author's style and that culture's style, or the author's rivals' style. Shakespeare, for example, will strike you as jarringly less unique when you read passages from his contemporaries and realize that in many cases you wouldn't be able to tell the difference. This is not to put down Shakespeare in any way; but what jumps out to you today, in any given instance, is relatively likely not what's unique about that bit. And what's unique dovetails with what's intended.

This in no way downgrades the value of originals. It's just trying to correct some subtle misconceptions.