Role of か in this sentence

Question

I found this sentence in an article about japanese swords

日本刀と他の刀との違いは、どれだけ波紋と鉄が美しいかにこだわっているかです

The translation is

The difference between japanese swords and other swords is how much the ripples and iron are particular to their beauty

But since か is used to carry a sense of questioning shouldn't it be more like

The difference between japanese swords and other swords could be how much the ripples and iron are particular to their beauty

Any help on how to parse and understand どれだけ波紋と鉄が美しいかにこだわっているかです would be appreciated :)

Answer 1

The basic structure of this sentence is:

日本刀と他の刀との違いはXです。
The difference between Japanese swords and other swords is (in) X.

The "is" in the translation simply corresponds to the copula です at the end of the original sentence. There is no need to change it to something else like "could be".

The "X" part consists of two nested embedded questions:

【どれだけ【刃文と鉄が美しいか】にこだわっているか】
【how much [blacksmiths] are particular about 【whether their hamon and iron are beautiful】】

(I believe 波紋 is a misspelling and thus "ripple" is a mistranslation. The correct kanji is 刃文. That said, this misspelling is understandable because 刃文 has a wavy appearance.)

Answer 2

I would parse it this way:

The difference between Japanese swords and other swords is this: How much do they care about "how beautiful are the ripples and iron?"?

And since this way there are essentially two implicit questions in this phrase it makes sense that there are two か.