If you don't know what the original language of a text was written in, then you are 100% dependent on someone telling you what the source language says. Every translation is going to be wrong somewhere. I know this becawh use I used to be an interpreter for the Deaf/Hard of Hearing. It's is not possible to fully convey every word and concept from one language to another.
For what it's worth, if anything, here's my amateurish attempt at an answer:
1. On the one hand, I agree no translation can capture all of the meaning in the original text, every denotation as well as every connotation. Something is always lost in translation. By the way, this is true of any translation, not only the Bible.
2. On the other hand, what's completely left out is that every competent translation captures important aspects of the meaning in the original text.
3. Hence this is a good reason to use multiple translations. And if one uses multiple translations, then that's typically sufficient to understand what the original text says in general.
4. To be specific, it's important not merely to use multiple translations, but to use multiple kinds of translations – i.e. translations with different translation philosophies. The translation philosophies most commonly used in Bible translation are the following:
A. Bringing the text to the reader (functional equivalence).
i. This reproduces the meaning of the original as much as possible.
ii. Another way to put it is that this attempts to bridge the gap in grammatical distance but retain historical distance.
iii. Presupposition: the meaning of the text is translatable from one language to another without significant loss, and in this respect the meaning is not necessarily tied to the specific words of the text but meaning and words can be separable to some degree.
iv. Hence, crudely speaking, the emphasis is on translation at the sentence level, and the emphasis is on substance over structure.
B. Bringing the reader to the text (formal equivalence).
i. This reproduces the form (word and word order aka lexemes and syntax) of the original as much as possible.
ii. Another way to put it is that this attempts to retain both grammatical and historical distance in intelligible English.
iii. Presupposition: words, word orders, and other linguistic structures carry meaning and cannot be readily divorced from one another without some degree of loss.
iv. Hence, crudely speaking, the emphasis is on translation at the individual word level, and the emphasis is on structure as an important conveyor of the substance.
C. Mediating. Very few translations are purely of one kind or the other kind. Most translations are a blend, or range along a spectrum, no matter what their marketing or advertising says. Otherwise a pure formal equivalence translation would be a rigid interlinear, whereas a pure functional equivalence translation would be a free-wheeling paraphrase. Of course, interlinears and paraphrases exist, but most translations fall somewhere in-between these extremes.
D. Paraphrase. A paraphrase attempts to bridge both grammatical and historical distance.
E. "Literal" translations. I think what most people mean by "literal" translation in the context of the Bible is a formally equivalent translation. However the use of the word "literal" in Bible translation merits a word or two.
i. Most words don't have just one meaning. Rather words usually have a range of possible meanings, viz. semantic range or semantic domain. As such, there is no single "literal" meaning for many if not most words in any given language. Rather there are several "literal" meanings for many if not most words in any given language.
ii. Let's take some examples in English. What's the literal meaning of the word "run"? Is it to move at a fast pace? Is it a term in baseball? Is it to spill a liquid as in "my cup runs over"? Is it a tear or a rip as in "there's a run in her stocking"? And so on. The answer is all of them could be the literal meaning of "run" depending on the context. Hence context is a major determinant of the literal definition of a word. Another example, what's the literal meaning of "ball" - a spherical object to play with, to cry or weep profusely, etc. Still another example, which I've heard Mark Strauss use, what's the literal meaning of key - e.g. an item to unlock doors, a musical pitch, the solution to a puzzle, a basketball court reference?
iii. Same goes not only for words but for phrases too. For example, the French phrase J'ai froid means "I'm cold", but if translated literally it would be "I have [a] cold" which sounds like the person is implying they're sick or unwell. So a literal translation would convey the wrong meaning. At the same time, if we translated "I'm cold" into French, then it would literally be Je suis froid, but in French that means a person has a cold personality, not that they're cold in temperature. Another example is pomme de terre which literally translated means "apple of [the] earth". But the actual meaning in English is "potato".
iv. What about in Koine Greek, which of course is the language of the New Testament? What's the literal meaning of logos? Is it always "word"? No, not always, far from it. There is no single literal meaning of logos. There is a semantic range. The NASB is one of the most "literal" Bible translations but it translates the word logos in a variety of ways - word, statement, message, news, story, and many more. Or consider Mk 1:2, "before your face" is the literal translation, but "ahead of you" is what it means.
v. Or what about biblical Hebrew? Take Amos 4:6, "cleanness of teeth" is the literal translation, but "empty stomach" or "nothing to eat" is what's meant.
vi. In short, it is not always reliable to translate words literally. One must translate words according to their meaning and context.
5. Importantly, there are different levels at which translation works too. For example, Vern Poythress and Wayne Grudem have argued for 4 different levels (which I've taken from Don Carson's "The Limits of Functional Equivalence in Bible Translation and Other Limits Too"):
A. The naive approach. Translation is mechanically replacing one word in one language (source) with another word in another language (receptor). This may be popular among monolingual people, but almost no one else takes it seriously. The false assumptions are that the semantic ranges of both the source word and the receptor word are equivalent and that the grammatical structures of the source language and the receptor language are equivalent. Neither is anywhere near true.
B. The theoretically informed approach. This understands the basics of linguistics and translation in terms of form and function. This is where most translation is done.
C. The discerning approach. This builds on (B) by recognizing that there are subtleties and complexities in language. For example, this would recognize that breath, wind, and spirit can be varied translations for the same Hebrew term ruach.
D. The reflexive approach. This is the highest level in which every subtlety and complexity is revealed.
6. A competent translation will sufficiently achieve (B) and often (C), but (D) is probably impossible for any translation qua translation to achieve. Yet (D) is the level at which the question evidently expects our Bible translations to operate. However one can have a perfectly competent and trustworthy translation by achieving (B) and even (C) without achieving (D).
7. Besides, (D) is where supporting material like commentaries shine. Commentaries bring out what a translation alone cannot bring out. For the Bible, I mean “commentaries” like the NET Bible's full notes, the notes in a good study Bible, expositional commentaries, exegetical commentaries, technical commentaries focused primarily on the Hebrew and Greek, and so on.
8. So, sure, one can grant that no translation qua translation can achieve (D), but that's what commentaries are for. Indeed, if a person reads multiple kinds of translations, and uses good commentaries, then they can achieve sufficient understanding of the original text (which one could cache out in detail what this means but I'll leave it aside for now since it'd take even more time and space to do so).
9. As an aside, this isn't only true of the Bible, but it's true of other works as well. For example, take Dante's The Divine Comedy. There are many fine translations of the Commedia in English, ranging from the functional to the formal and everything in between. What's more, many scholars have written lengthy and detailed notes or commentaries on the Commedia.
If someone reads and studies two or three kinds of competent translations of Dante (e.g. Mandelbaum for the formal equivalence and poetic beauty, Musa as a decent functional equivalence translation, and Palma for the best terza rima I've ever seen rendered in English), and furthermore reads competent and intelligent notes or commentaries on the poem (e.g. Singleton, the Hollanders, Durling and Martinez, Prue Shaw, Giuseppe Mazzotta), then they can achieve sufficient understanding of the Commedia.
I think this is analogous to reading the Bible in multiple kinds of competent translations along with reading competent commentaries on the Bible.
10. In short, we have many competent Bible translations in English today, as well as a host of competent resources like biblical commentaries to shed light on what the Bible says, that even though no translation is perfect, we can nevertheless trust our Bibles. This is more than most of the rest of the world can say. The English language truly is blessed. Lk 12:48.
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