I always preferred the idea that fields can be made multilingual. Back in 2003 (before linguaplone), I made 2 multilingual sites using multilingual fields; I proposed my solution to the Plone devs, but it was (politely) dismissed. The plone.app.multilingual, while proposing (imposing?) a solution for every possible situations, is a bit too complex. The translation process could be made simple and intuitive for both the developers and the users. Instead of creating new objects, translation of multilingual fields could be saved within the objects; it may not be a silver bullet, but for simple sites, with simple edition and publication workflows, it works...
Edit: there's a discussion about multilingual fields here: About raptus.multilanguagefields, Plone 5 and beyond