Very good point, and definitely something to consider. You have unluckily picked a bad example from Foucault, though, because that piece was actually translated from a lecture he gave, which makes it all the more amazing to me that it’s so incomprehensible. (Perhaps it was later included in Archeology of Knowledge?)

Translation is an extremely interesting subject, I think: does one translate as accurately as possible to stay true to the source material, or does one try and make the words ‘better’ (easier understood, more poetic, etc.) when translating? Both sides have compelling arguments, and there is no right answer. I also appreciate that translations often come across as choppy.

However, the worst translations, I think we can say with some certainty, are those which come from texts which are originally written pretty poorly themselves. Perhaps it is extremely difficult to translate from French in particular, seeing as most of the original academics who popularised this style were French writers. Perhaps this style was then falsely used in English and that’s what got us to where we are today. More likely, I think, is that lots of these texts are trying to hard to sound academic and really, they haven’t got a whole lot to say.