What a difficult subject you've placed on the table.
I think that we, as translators, are first and foremost professional readers, that is, people trained to read, interpret and understand texts beyond any other individual's comprehension. If not, how could we be capable of communicating what is said in one language to another language? Some experts even consider that the very act of reading, even in one's own language, conveys the act of translating, that is, of interpreting the writer's intentions and ideas.
According to this, I think the translator is compelled to understand perfectly well the text to be translated, and then, and only then, convert it into the goal language. Sometimes we face obscure passages, or seemingly erroneous phrases, but it is our duty to investigate what those paragraphs mean (that's why we organize these forums, isn't it?) so that we can offer our goal reader the correct meaning of the text in his own language. This latter idea deals with another edge of the subject: that of the author's style. But I think I'll talk about this latter, once I read some other forum users' opinions.
Saludos
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