A Question of Purpose
What should a translation accomplish? The answer depends on the sort of work one is translating. Style does not matter in a scientific research report. Translations of philosophical treatises must, above all, present the argument correctly, which means the translator must actually understand it in order to choose the right terms. In a work of epistemology, it is a mistake to translate the Russian word oshchushchenie as “feeling” rather than “sensation,” even though both appear in a Russian-English dictionary. Dictionaries are never enough, and one can always tell that a translator doesn’t understand his job when he justifies his choices by referring to one. By relying on a dictionary, you could make a case for translating Pascal’s famous description of man not as a “thinking reed” but as a “cogitating clarinet.”
The key issue, in short, is purpose . Why is one undertaking the translation in the first place? Who is its intended audience? What is the most important thing to preserve if the purpose of translating is to be accomplished? Google Translate doesn’t worry about such questions. People should.
