The translations do not look like that. Binary calibre releases contain compiled translations in .mo format. And those in turn are stored in a zip file resources/localization/locales.zip which is 6.2 MB. The size of a calibre install comes from one thing and one thing alone, the need to bundle all dependencies, since calibre uses cross platform libraries not available on the OS. Actual calibre code and resources (icons/fonts/translations/etc) total about 60MB on disk after installation.
I especially liked the OP's claim that "calibre does so little".
