A lot of the world’s diversity regarding religions, ideologies and philosophies is the result of shit translations.

Take the Indian monk Kumarajiva. With his translations of Buddhist texts to Chinese, he left a deep mark in the way the new religion was taught in the country – as well as a dividing line in the history of Buddhism, since any further religious developments in India would only arrive in China after the country had already been imbued with Kumarajiva-style doctrine.

Kumarajiva's translations go beyond the previous concept-matching system of translation through use of Taoist and Confucian terms; at the same time, they do adapt Buddhist concepts to the specific Chinese environment in which he lived, chewing them so that they're easily digestible. This is how a Chinese or East Asian Buddhism was created that set itself apart from the original, Indian Buddhism, to the point that 5th century Buddhist inscriptions and manuscripts in southern China request accession to Nirvana not only for those of merit but, in typically Chinese fashion, for their ancestors too.

This is the reason why later, more literal translations of Buddhist texts never had quite the same impact in China: Kumarajiva had made up Chinese Buddhism to make his patrons happy, and the Chinese liked their Chinese Buddhism, thank you very much.

Kumarajiva’s text often replaced earlier translations simply because they had more literary merit and were more easily understood, not because they were more faithful to the original or the underlying Buddhist spirit. In particular, the “Three Treatises” (“Sanlun”) originally written by Nagarjuna and Aryadeva – two Indian Buddhists of whose lives little is known – became highly impactful on subsequent Chinese thought only through Kumarajiva’s creative translations. An entire book — the famous Da Zhidu Lun, very well-known in Chinese Buddhism — is only attested in a Chinese translation by Kumarajiva and is unknown in the Tibetan and Indian traditions. Chances are that Kumarajiva made it up, entirely or for the most part.