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Note of warning: I merely skimmed this thread. This is not as much for other people as it is for me to just kind of note my own thoughts, so I apologize if some of it has been addressed or only makes sense to me.
In my opinion, translation is an awful thing. It twists, distorts, augments, diminishes, and transforms the original text. Even if the translator is brilliant beyond comprehension, fluent in the exact language and dialects used in the book, from the times that they were written, and even if he injects a penetrating musicality into every word and phrase he picks (as, of course, Guerney does), it only becomes more the work of the translator - awe-inspiring as it may be. Nothing is able to substitute the original.
Using an example from the one of the only two other languages I know anything about (and that, very little), if you are to come across the phrase "zuki-zuki" in Japanese, you cannot effectively translate it into English. It is essentially onomatopoeia for the sound a sharp pain would make. In English, you would either have to make up a rather silly-sounding word, or simply narrate the feeling. Compound together countless problem of this sort, and you get quite a bit of difference in meaning. Also, authors, such as Homer and Dante, employ such astounding literary devices - acrosstics, meter, rhyme, etc. - that to attempt to emulate it would be useless, and more harmful than good.
That being said, it's absolutely necessary. I'm not going to learn Russian. Every time I read a translation I think to myself, "Man, I gotta learn this language. I feel like I'm being gyped." But I don't have to patience to learn a language simply to read a book in it everytime I want to read a translation from new language. I don't even have the patience to learn one.
I have a book on Biblical translation, and how the process works for such a highly regarded and linguistically fragile piece of work. It brings up issues such as figures of speech and puns that must be either ignored or changed. There is a line between accuracy in contents and accuracy in poetics that must be treaded very carefully.
Basically, I think the only thing you can do beyond learning the language is to read multiple translations, from both poetic and literal translators. We're really forced to be content with highly imperfect works.
Of course, that doesn't mean that the pieces are not worth reading. I would still encourage everyone to read a translation Homer regardless of how much it fails. It's just an incompleteness that we have to live with. I try not to let it bother me too much.
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