I thought of a thought experiment about letting someone else “restore” the translated passage back to its original form, say Pali, or in another one of the early languages such as Sanskrit. I looked at several Chinese Agama Suttas and cited examples. MN-118, SN 54.1, etc- Digha=Long, Rassa=Short. Why “Heavy / Light”?
One of the choices for translation is between “preserving the text” as close to the ancient record as possible, so it can survive for a long long time; or an attempt to “preserve the true meaning” (mindful that meaning is often in the mind of the translator).