What you wrote about a direct translation is what kind of loses the nuance though.
Imo it's good to be aware of both, but ultimately language is a tool to convey meaning. In some cases it's also kind of impossible to have it both direct and keep the meaning, e.g. english says "on the bus/train" while german says "im bus/zug". German does have a direct translation for "on", which is "auf", but in this case it uses "im", which itself has the direct english translation of "in the" in english. I don't think any dictionary would list "in" as a translation for "on", it's just an etymological quirk that a different preposition is used.
Or more extremely, something like japanese to english, 公園で会いましょう, let's meet in the park, would have to be more literally translated as "using the park as the location, let's meet". (And I don't even know if that japanese sentence is completely correct, just tried to come up with something for locative で).
It's just not practical to always include. Speaking a language means to be able to take a meaning and express it. Translation is deriving the meaning and reexpressing it.
I think the more direct versions can be very useful for learning though. And while nuance does get lost sometimes, it's often unavoidable.
Thinking it might be a mistake is understandable. Just moving the kid instead of just calling the parents again to confirm is incompetence.