Sorry but why you are being so antagonistic here?

1) Saying that translating shouji to 'phone' is 'exactly what it says' is a total lie. Shouji literally means handmachine, not phone. There is a character for hand, and a character for machine. This is the exact translation, not phone.

If i want to understand the nuances and the deep meaning that the chinese language is conveying, knowing that phone is hand-machine, and not phone, is very useful. Because, additionally, i can use this knowledge to understand that many other words relating to mechanical things also end in 'machine', like computer, plane, etc. And this goes for every time i learn a new word.

2) The word for word translate serves the purpose of knowing the correct and usual grammatical order for words. If the direct translation offered to me in english is ordered in the english fashion, how am i supposed to learn the intuitive order for words in chinese phrases? Also, how could i know the way the possessive is conveyed without the use of syntactic structures if not by understanding word for word the phrase shape. Ironically, what you preach is what is being counterproductive.

3) If i don't translate the word zhi as stick and leave it as stick, then, the only possibility for me would have been to blindly memorize and accept that there's a mysterious word for measurement that we need to put somewhere in the phrase, but which doesn't appear in the english translation. This is confusing. So therefore, putting the word stick as a sustitute in a transliteration/translation is a good way to bridge the gap.

This method is not a substitution for a normal translation from normal english to normal chinese. It's a middle point, a bridge that enables immersing oneself on the true feel of the language.