I'm personally quite happy with the French translation, but I must admit that my knowledge of Pd doesn't allow me to fully measure the confusion of a beginner confronting the docs with the translated GUI.
Also it seems to me that maybe the problem is not equivalent with the different languages; for e.g in French many words can be found that are quite near from original:
object -> objet
message -> message
number -> nombre
symbol -> symbole
comment -> commentaire
bang -> bang
graph -> graphique
canvas -> canvas
vu-meter -> vu-mètre
Of course this is not the same for every word. For e.g "toggle" turns to "Interrupteur"... And "Slider" has even been kept in English, because no really usual word was found ("Glissière" is very unusual; "Curseur" may work though).
So I really don't know if translation should be entirely discarded. Maybe a preference switch could be added to manually restore the original English version?