If one asks should books ever be translated from their languages of origin, the answers are yes and no. No one will ever be able to make a <i>direct</i> translation, or actually is, but the translator can be sure that the text will be missing a great deal of athmosphere, tongue jokes and things like that.
There however, is a way to tell the same story and give the same wibes to readers all over the world, but that requires just way more work. And I claim that <i>any</i> book can be translated by this, from any language to any other language.
I'm going to take an example here: Harry Potter. I've read a single Potter novel out of curiosity (it was a fascinating read and well written, but not exactly my cup of tea), and I read it translated in Finnish. It was indeed a well-written piece. Out of curiosity I dug out an English translation somewhere and flipped through it. The translator had put a great amount of her time on it, she hadn't just made a word-to-word translation but had obviously tried to locate a joke corresponding or at least close enough to those points the originals used language that could not be translated without losing a point. And she had also bothered to figure out "Finnish" translations to those new "English" terms Rowling had made up (like "quidditch"), and I heard by the way that many translators doing the jobs on various other European languages had not bothered. Even though I'm not a craving Potter fan (like I'm not a craving LotR fan either even though I praise both of those books and movies), but I admire the way both writer and translator put their effort to the task at hand to give their readers as good experience as possible.
If this hasn't convinced you yet, I can move on to another field I feel moving on slightly stronger soil for me: Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Every native English speaker (who have read these five) will probably think that there is <i>no</i> way these could effectively be translated to different languages; but believe me when I say that they have. This book's got a huge fan base in Finland, and I'm 100% certain that all of them have not read Adams' works in the original language. Of course, everyone who has say that they prefer the English translation (like me), but the translator has again done magnificent job.
I've also read many bad translations, some of them going so far that whenever there's been a term unknown to the translator, it's been left like it is or then just twisted so that it looks like a Finnish written word. Thankfully, most of the translators at least around here are decent ones, so I don't have to make a difference do I go after a book in Finnish or English (but of course I pick the original if I just get the chance).
As a final point I could say that if tremendous pieces have been managed to convert from English to that Odd Nordic Jabber?, why would one not be able to translate from German to English, two languages that are even more closely related to each other.
Of course, there is never a way to reach a 100% same experience with a translated piece than an original, but 99% is more than possible, trust me. It just requires a crapload of work.
A good translator is never a faceless copier, but an <i>auteur</i>.