Values in translation?

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Question that may feel stupid, but are not that stupid: should units be converted while translating? Or appended as a note?
Let's take some countries using the pounds, and some other countries using the grams. And it happens you are converting a text with pounds to a language mainly read by people understanding only grams? What is the appropriate behavior?

After all, the purpose of the translation is only to translate the meaning, and if some understand the meaning of 5 nautical miles, it wouldn't mean so much to many. But also it may be felt as a way to denature the content, especially if it is intended (a story about someone being in US shouldn't pay suddenly in € in the Spanish version).

[linguaholic]

Question that may feel stupid, but are not that stupid: should units be converted while translating? Or appended as a note?
Let's take some countries using the pounds, and some other countries using the grams. And it happens you are converting a text with pounds to a language mainly read by people understanding only grams? What is the appropriate behavior?

After all, the purpose of the translation is only to translate the meaning, and if some understand the meaning of 5 nautical miles, it wouldn't mean so much to many. But also it may be felt as a way to denature the content, especially if it is intended (a story about someone being in US shouldn't pay suddenly in € in the Spanish version).

Interesting question. I had this problem sometimes when I had to translate Ancient Chinese texts into German. In ancient China, they had some very special units that actually make no sense for people from other countries/cultures. But still. I would probably keep the unit in my German text and explain the unit in a footnote, rather than just converting the unit to some well-known unit (if possible. There might be units for things in China that you can't even convert in something else because maybe we don't even have a unit to measure unit X. )