Lost in translation

I too have read several books that seem to have lost their original flavor when translated. I have read hundreds of books in English and over the years I have tried to read English books I enjoy, in a different language. Over winter break I sat down with my mom to read Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets in Russian. My grammar is not great, but even I noticed some phrases and sentences that sounded funny and that didn't really make sense in Russian. Sometimes the translations are too literal, that it is hard to understand it in a different language. Of course it makes sense to us in English, but a native Russian, would not understand the sequence of words or the expressions that are conveyed so easily in English that do not sound the same in Russian. I also read part of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in Hebrew, and even though my vocabulary is not that strong, I thought that I was a great translation although the sound of the text felt different than reading it in the original English. Also, a few years back, I read One Hundred Years of Solitude, and I thought it was a great translation. Hopefully in the future I will be able to read it in Spanish and will be able to give it a more thorough comparison of the two languages and the quality of the English translation.