<human>: I've been reading a lot more than ever over the past few years, but have always had a problem with translations. This is because they ALL seem to have some problems, and there is always a critic online somewhere saying the translation is poor, so because of this I have only been reading in English eg. Pynchon, Roth, McCarthy ... But now I have been thinking about reading more of the (older parts of the) canon, with an interest in Russian, French and Italian literature. Do you believe that reading a translation can be worthwhile, or do you always lose too much of the original writing and therefore meaning? (for example books like Dante's Divine Comedy or Tolstoy's War and Peace)

Condense the text into a few key points
<bot>: Do you believe that reading a translation can be worthwhile, or do you always lose too much of the original writing and therefore meaning?