Why do people who pretend to be serious scholars work in translation?

It means you are lazy jerks. I don't care if you're not good with languages; if you don't bother to learn Greek (for example, in philosophy), you are at the mercy of the guy who did the translation you use. It might be a good translation. It might not be. He might be trying to sell a point, whether he knows it or not.

In such things, the shades of meaning matter. The gist of the passage is not sufficient. You also need to know if, say, another form of the same word occurs, because that tells you how the writer is thinking. This might not come through in a translation.

If you claim to be expert in your field, you should be equipped with the basic tools.