Fix Translate issue #27904, string comparison fix and updated test_bytes

Let's see if I did this correct. I pulled the latest ipy-2.7-maint and merged my changes into a new branch. It contains my code from the pull/213.  The changes are of the following
1. throw the appropriate exception for Pop verified with CPython 2.7.8
2. Fix the translate issue 27904 
3. string comparison fix issue 35470
4. Pulled changes from https://github.com/IronLanguages/main/pull/214. I wasn't sure if I would stomp on it.