Let’s accept your premise that translations are not “canonical”. Even so, are translations made by Jews, such as the Septuagint, at all useful in uncovering the sense of the Hebrew? In other words, isn’t it a fragment of evidence that Jewish scholars picked X foreign word and not Y in translation?
I am assuming the traditional account of the Septuagint’s authorship by Jewish scholars, which knowing you, is probably not a good assumption. But if you don’t like that particular example just address it in the theoretical. :)
None of the original Septuagint, which was a coerced translation of only the Five Books of Moses by 70 rabbis, has survived.
Why not learn Hebrew and read the original? It's not that difficult. If it had been, I couldn't have done it. I couldn't even learn Greek! (Granted, Greek is harder.)
Anyway, there is a Midrash that Moses wrote the Torah in "seventy languages" (referring to the number of primary non-Jewish nations), and non-Jews may study the Torah in their own language. In fact, they may study a traditional rabbinic Biblical commentary that gives the peshat (plain sense).
But you must remember that the Torah and Na"KH weren't given to the world as a whole but to Israel. The appropriation of Israel's Holy Books by chr*stianity because they are now "universal" is a chr*stian distortion.
I am assuming the traditional account of the Septuagint’s authorship by Jewish scholars, which knowing you, is probably not a good assumption. But if you don’t like that particular example just address it in the theoretical. :)
One of the disasters mourned on the fast day of `Asarah BeTevet is the translation of the Jewish Scriptures into another language, opening the way for their appropriation and misuse by other religions. Yeah, this seems to somewhat contradict the "seventy languages" thing, but . . .
Um, to clarify, it’s the translation of the Septuagint that is mourned on `Asarah BeTevet!