I also read a lot of old translations, especially philosophy, and completely agree. It is amazing how many translators that are academic professors with PhDs in the subject matter fundamentally misunderstand the ideas they are translating, or try to seem "impressive" (and obscure their lack of comprehension) by translating simple plain text into pompous and indecipherable jargon.
Personally, I usually deal with that by reading the translators commentary so I can see where they were missing the point, and reading multiple translations.
A lot of the time I think certain ideas are semi-intentionally misunderstood, because they are personally threatening or upsetting to the translator. Nietzsche for example had a deep disdain for the type of professor that translates classic texts- from having had a bad experience as a professor of classics himself at University of Basel. His books are filled with cutting deep insults directly targeted at this type of person and their career, and when they translate it, they seem to almost always manage to "subtly misunderstand" what he's saying.
There is also an aspect of (for lack of a better term) "spiritual progression" where unless you are already at or nearly at the level of the author, you can't comprehend the ideas, and then tend to assume it is something else entirely that you can comprehend.
Personally, I usually deal with that by reading the translators commentary so I can see where they were missing the point, and reading multiple translations.
A lot of the time I think certain ideas are semi-intentionally misunderstood, because they are personally threatening or upsetting to the translator. Nietzsche for example had a deep disdain for the type of professor that translates classic texts- from having had a bad experience as a professor of classics himself at University of Basel. His books are filled with cutting deep insults directly targeted at this type of person and their career, and when they translate it, they seem to almost always manage to "subtly misunderstand" what he's saying.
There is also an aspect of (for lack of a better term) "spiritual progression" where unless you are already at or nearly at the level of the author, you can't comprehend the ideas, and then tend to assume it is something else entirely that you can comprehend.