I sampled one of the Moomin books in French and was struck by how bad that translation seemed, too. I don't know them in the original (it's not a language I speak), but I was able to compare the English version there in the store, and the prose just seemed much livelier in English. (The French Harry Potter is comparable to the English, for a control for this experiment.)

That wasn't actual censorship, but unless it's an unlucky sample or a quirk of my taste then the French were unfortunate with both authors.