Antoine assumes that the so-called "literal meaning" is the correct meaning. This is an incredibly simplistic view of semantics that doesn't fit with reality. Lexical semantics - expecially when we go from one language to another - is too complex for the basic "literal" translation to be accurate. So when we get to idioms, as Harris discusses in his post, the idea of literal translation becomes even more unhelpful.

I think Antoine also misunderstands the meaning of literal translation and literal meaning. It could very easily (and I have previously) that a literal translation is a kind of syntactic transliteration, while truly "literal meaning" would result in a functional translation. The term literal in of itself is utterly unhelpful at time.

Finally then, I think the title of this post is completely correct and the better question is not the better question.