Ttranslation issues can happen if the user added to a pose or a figure in the past. The applied pose will add to, instead of replace the translation data. 
 Those translations then have to be dealt with by hand. If you don't turn off the limits, you can't get the full packaged pose, though.
You can always go in and set limits again, but I don't usually need to. Rotation of a joint usually gets everything right. Translation only ever works anyway with IK chains and on the whole figure. IK is useful, but I often have to turn it off anyway to get poses that aren't really very unusual.