I read the Brian Murdoch translation of All Quiet on the Western Front, and noticed some startling disparities between it and the traditional (or classic) translation.

For example, the titular line

He fell in October 1918, on a day that was so quiet and still on the whole front, that the army report confined itself to the single sentence: All quiet on the Western Front.

Is rendered instead as (emphasis mine)

He fell in October 1918, on a day that was so still and quiet along the entire front line that the army depsatches restricted themselves to the single sentence: that there was nothing new to report on the western front.

The translator insists that "Nothing new in the west" is a better pun, and that he maintained the title of the book only out of respect for the original translation.

Further, the final lines of the book are traditionally rendered as follows:

He had fallen forward and lay on the earth as though sleeping. Turning him over one saw that he could not have suffered long; his face had an expression of calm, as though almost glad the end had come.

Murdoch instead opts for (again, emphasis mine):

He had sunk forwards and was lying on the ground as if asleep. When they turned him over, you could see that he could not have suffered long — his face wore an expression that was so composed that it looked as if he were almost happy that it had turned out that way.

This is less punch than the original, and arguably changes the meaning somewhat.

Of course, these are only the lines I noticed, two of the most famous from this book.

There's a line in Don Quixote where Cervantes argues that so much is lost in a translation that it's not worth reading. Sometimes I wonder about the intricacies that are lost to time.