I really think you aren't talking about the same thing that I am. I'm not sure why you're assuming bad faith on my part rather than engage in discussion to clarify.

I think it should be quite clear by now that I am not talking about isolated words that broadly lack an equivalent concept in the target language. I even quoted the bit from the original comment that I took issue with and proceeded to give examples so I'm really not sure where the misunderstanding between us could lie at this point. Perhaps you are the one who should stop and more carefully think about what I wrote?

As to your example. I certainly do not accept that this is a case where we should throw our hands up and accept that different translators will go about things differently. Those two sentences in english have (as you note) rather different meanings. So either one or both translators must be wrong.

You have indicated that the original work in the native language is ambiguous. In such a case I do not think it is remotely acceptable for a translator to arbitrarily pick one of several possible meanings and just run with it. If the original meaning of the text is ambiguous then removing that ambiguity changes the meaning thus it is a bad translation. The translator instead needs to faithfully communicate that ambiguity, possibly resorting to a note if it isn't possible to easily express such a thing in the target language.

I realize that many people aren't going to want such a marked up copy. But without all the gory detail the reader will be consuming some sort of bizarre partial fan fiction. Your example illustrates that perfectly.