That's my first thought after reading it.

And a longer, second thought is that while I do agree with many of his points, I think Barnes at times is being purposely obtuse with some of his points. Yes, translation is a difficult, funny business (as I'm discovering to my occasional chagrin), but his focus on the minute details often obscures the larger question of how ought one approach doing a translation?

Recently I read Norman Thomas di Giovanni's book on Borges/Translation, Lessons from the Master. In it, di Giovanni devotes some space toward addressing the issue of how to translate a work, particularly a work whose author is still alive and who is native-fluent in the language of translation. di Giovanni (and Borges) advocates the rendering of the original's prose into the full idiomatic expressions of the translated language; if an English word or phrase exists that isn't borrowed from the original language, use that as suitable to create an "English" feel rather than a Latinate English translation. I find that approach to be a (mostly) useful guideline, much more than I found Barnes' meandering thoughts on the issue that are embedded in this lengthy review.