Why literal museum translations lose historical context

How different were the Japanese and English information boards in the museums?

Some English text appeared mechanically literal, so it conveyed the words without always preserving the context needed by an English-speaking visitor.

Some English-language museum boards appeared mechanically or overly literally translated. A word-for-word rendering can lose the context an English-speaking visitor needs to understand the historical meaning. Clarke and his colleagues left business cards at at least two museums and offered to improve the English text. Their offer was to work from supplied translations and make the contextual meaning clearer.