Indeed, it is rather fun. That said, a thing I’ve learned is how much variation there is between usage even among native-English speakers from different regions or countries such as Ireland to NZ, or Australia to Canada… Mom, as an ESL teacher, always enjoyed good examples of usage which created some hilarity either due to translation or due to different standards. And there are false friends when you get into translation: one of my best examples of that was watching a French-language MSF video on health care in refugee camps where the French word promiscuité was used to explain why diseases can spread rapidly in refugee camps. I looked at my native French-speaker medical coordinator colleague and asked, in French, what that word means in French as used there: oh, that everyone is living really close together. In the terms we know today, “social separation” = not so possible in refugee camps. But it made for a fun double-take at first, eh? 🙂
(so much world, so little time....) 
I enjoy the poor English translations like this. 🙂
March 28, 2020 at 14:20
Indeed, it is rather fun. That said, a thing I’ve learned is how much variation there is between usage even among native-English speakers from different regions or countries such as Ireland to NZ, or Australia to Canada… Mom, as an ESL teacher, always enjoyed good examples of usage which created some hilarity either due to translation or due to different standards. And there are false friends when you get into translation: one of my best examples of that was watching a French-language MSF video on health care in refugee camps where the French word promiscuité was used to explain why diseases can spread rapidly in refugee camps. I looked at my native French-speaker medical coordinator colleague and asked, in French, what that word means in French as used there: oh, that everyone is living really close together. In the terms we know today, “social separation” = not so possible in refugee camps. But it made for a fun double-take at first, eh? 🙂
April 2, 2020 at 20:01