Maybe I am misreading, but in case not everone is not aware of them, in many ways concept-wise the “expansive translation” sounds quite similar to critical editions / translations [1] and other similar scholarly annotated editions [2]. This kind of work usually includes more or less extensive commentaries (often presented as footnotes or endnotes) by later scholars that attempt to explain meaning and context of the original text that may be lost on their contemporary audience. (Critical editions also attempt to deal with cases where there are several differing or fragmented versions of the source text or the original language is very archaic or dead which ofc leads to issues with faitful translations.)
Sometimes the commentaries become influential on their own right. (Weirder things have also happened, like when according to one textual history theory, one day in China somebody shoehorned in a historical novel to terse ancient administrative logbook as “a commentary” to make it more interesting as the original chronicle was attributed to most famous of all scholars, thus creating a renowned classic [3].)
The point being, in scholar traditions it is traditional to distinguish between the text / translation and the commentaries, which at the same time deals with impossibility of perfect translations (by acknowledging that explanations of translation choices at minimum and in general, also other annotations are warranted) but also tries to retain a text with considerable fidelity to its source (such as, has no large insertions to improve it for contemporary audience) which is also useful.
Maybe I am misreading, but in case not everone is not aware of them, in many ways concept-wise the “expansive translation” sounds quite similar to critical editions / translations [1] and other similar scholarly annotated editions [2]. This kind of work usually includes more or less extensive commentaries (often presented as footnotes or endnotes) by later scholars that attempt to explain meaning and context of the original text that may be lost on their contemporary audience. (Critical editions also attempt to deal with cases where there are several differing or fragmented versions of the source text or the original language is very archaic or dead which ofc leads to issues with faitful translations.)
Sometimes the commentaries become influential on their own right. (Weirder things have also happened, like when according to one textual history theory, one day in China somebody shoehorned in a historical novel to terse ancient administrative logbook as “a commentary” to make it more interesting as the original chronicle was attributed to most famous of all scholars, thus creating a renowned classic [3].)
The point being, in scholar traditions it is traditional to distinguish between the text / translation and the commentaries, which at the same time deals with impossibility of perfect translations (by acknowledging that explanations of translation choices at minimum and in general, also other annotations are warranted) but also tries to retain a text with considerable fidelity to its source (such as, has no large insertions to improve it for contemporary audience) which is also useful.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Textual_criticism
[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annotated_edition
[3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zuo_zhuan