I'm largely in agreement with @Valkyrie on this one, particularly when it comes to idioms and word-for-word translation. I remember in the early days of digital translation being frustrated by the fact that idioms were almost always translated wrongly. For example, the German expression "es gibt" literally means "there is" (or "there are"), but in the early days of digital translation it would always be translated to "it gives" (which is what the two words individually mean). And one only needs to read certain instruction manual for, say, self-assembly furniture to see the confusion that can result when trying to understand the word-for-word translation of them from the original Chinese into English.

As for how I would feel about any of my stories being translated - if I ever finish any of my longer novels, I'll let you know.  

I agree with @Marty and @Valkyrie, idioms can be difficult.

What about if  there are perfect words in the other language, but the translator chooses not to use them because he wants to color the story, screenplay or poem in a certain way?

 I remember a translation of The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Frodo was  suddenly Sam's boss and Saruman's sign (the white hand) was his logo *cringe*. They wanted a  modern translation.

I stumbled across this interesting topic. I have not exactly translated in the traditional sense, but edited stories into more readable English, which have either been translated by the author, written in English when that was not the author's first language, and with one story translated automatically, then tidied up.

I would hazard to say that it is virtually impossible to write correctly in a second language unless you are truly bilingual, which means not simply speaking and writing in a second language, but knowing the culture, having lived in the country. Some authors get close when writing in another language, but still need editing, to polish the story.

The approach, should I believe, always be to try to maintain the author's style and not impose your own style on the work. This is important because foreign authors bring something new to the party. Which means the translation or polished version walks a tightrope between normal readable English and the style of the author. It is difficult to explain and difficult to do, I can only tell you that you know when you have got it right.

You know, because the author speaks and understands English and tells you, thank you, that is so much better.

If the author doesn't speak the language the book is being translated into you can only rely on trust and other people's comments, and people may not always agree.

There is always a degree of interpretation, but usually if you are in-tune with the author, it is possible to know what they intended and reform it without losing the original intention. It is a challenge, but can be very rewarding. 

I have polished stories on GA by German and Polish authors and on other sites from German and Italian authors. If you think about it, in the sense of what I have done, it is simply editing. Perhaps the most interesting aspect now is that auto translation by the likes of DeepL has become good enough to provided a rough translation that can be polished into good English, or presumably other languages.

On 10/26/2020 at 3:25 PM, Talo Segura said:

The approach, should I believe, always be to try to maintain the author's style and not impose your own style on the work.

Agreed. Not only the author's unique style, should be maintained, but  their actual words too. Some mix translation with interpretation which I personally deem presumptuous, at least without marking it as interpretation.

Thank you for your comment.

On 10/26/2020 at 10:25 AM, Talo Segura said:

I would hazard to say that it is virtually impossible to write correctly in a second language unless you are truly bilingual, which means not simply speaking and writing in a second language, but knowing the culture, having lived in the country. Some authors get close when writing in another language, but still need editing, to polish the story

I would add that a person is able to think in the language other than their own instead of translating from one to the other, then retranslating back again. I definitely agree with knowing the culture, which never occurred to me until you said it.