Yes, as an example, I mistakenly thought that you meant “translation” to be “transformation” in the general sense, like for rotations and mirroring that would be applicable for joseki.
It’s hard to point to many specific quotes where some others have used “translation” and “transformation” interchanged, since I think I’ve most often heard it just in informal and/or spoken discussions, but I’m sure I’ve heard people get mixed up about it many times. I don’t think that should be so surprising, since you even seem to believe that I misunderstood the distinction.
However, searching through the forum discussion about the Josekle game, I found one case where the word “translation” was meant to really describe mirroring and rotation:
I think I’ve heard it misused often enough, which may also be due to “translation” also having the metaphorical connection to language transformation, that I do not automatically assume that when someone says “translation”, that they precisely mean just spatial shifts.