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But it actually can be correct to remove redundancy. In Spanish, a double negative is the correct thing to do in many cases, but it would translate poorly to English, even though it can be literally translated as such.

These decisions naturally crop up all over the place during translation. It feels pointless to make blanket statements like you did about the removal of “watered down”. Without knowing that specific language intimately, I can’t say that it is wrong, and this is a very simple case.

Good quality translation will always be somewhat subjective.

Do you speak/understand more than one language? Honestly wondering, because if you do, I don't think this would be something you would think to be possible.

To a first approximation, nothing can be translated 1:1.

It's a genuinely hard problem. Even the idea of "correct translation" is slippery.

Yeh! A lot of words have dozens of meanings; many carry cultural meanings and shades, which can further depend on context. Some can be positive or pejorative depending on pronunciation or emphasis... etc. it's endless!