Eukaryotic ribosomes misincorporate one amino acid for every 1,000-10,000, whereas the eukaryotic replication machinery misincorporates one nucleotide for about every ten million. Why can the cell tolerate a higher rate of error in translation than in replication?

Replication error may cause production of many erroneous proteins while error in translation would affect the single protein.

Explanation:

The erroneous DNA molecules produced by errors in the process of replication would result in the formation of a large number of faulty mRNA molecules transcribed by using the faulty DNA strand as a template. The faulty mRNA molecules would produce an equally large number of faulty proteins. On the other hand, one or more errors during the process of translation would produce faulty proteins. There would not be any erroneous mRNA molecules.

Therefore, errors in replication are expressed in DNA, mRNA and proteins while the errors in translation are expressed only in proteins and are more bearable.