Maybe people like non-idiomatic translations because they make it seem like they are experiencing something different and foreign. After all, there is a whole movement in translation toward foreignizing translations, with the idea that "domesticating" is suspect.
But the supposedly foreign element often has no real relation to the source text. Awkwardly switching between singular and plural or mixing up transitive and untransitive verbs has nothing to do with the Chinese language. They are often just translation by-products, accidental effects produced by the process of translation itself.
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