I am also a Mandarin speaker, and a very interesting thing happens when I try to read classical Chinese by dictionary or my modern understanding of the language: It's vague, lacking nuance, and basically unreadable. It requires very talented translators and skilled academics to make readable modern translations.

For classical Chinese poetry, the best English translations have been other poets, even though most have been unable to read any Chinese! Check out "Lament of the Frontier Guard" by Tang dynasty poet Li Bo (李白), as written by Ezra Pound more than 100 years ago:

By the North Gate, the wind blows full of sand,

Lonely from the beginning of time until now!

Trees fall, the grass goes yellow with autumn.

I climb the towers and towers to watch out the barbarous land:

Desolate castle, the sky, the wide desert.

There is no wall left to this village.

Bones white with a thousand frosts,

High heaps, covered with trees and grass;

Who brought this to pass? ...

https://scalar.fas.harvard.edu/resources-for-loss/lament-of-...

I am sure professional translators would find issues on technical and stylistic points, but could any be as evocative with their own translations?

I think we have to be prepared to give LLMs some leeway with language ... or empower humans (both editors and readers) with the tools to "tune" the translations as appropriate to their tastes, understanding, and subjective needs. This is basically what Korny did, trying different tools and consulting other humans as needed with certain colloquialisms.

Translating poetry is, in many ways, an impossibility, which is why the best translations are by poets and not linguists as they’re essentially writing a new poem with the skeleton of the original.