A talented translator and linguist (whose name I cannot force myself to remember because I have already plunged into a holiday haze) once said, “Translating from one language to another is translating one universe to another.” Here is a little true story that illustrates this statement.
The Chair of my department is a polyglot who always addresses people in different languages.
One day, he came into my office and said to me in Ukrainian, “Harna divchyna!”
At that moment, an older female colleague walked in and asked, “So what did he say to you?”
I opened my mouth to respond and realized that what the Chair had said means “You are a beautiful girl!” And that sounds really bad in English when said by an older senior colleague to a female junior faculty member. In Ukrainian, however, this doesn’t sound creepy at all. It’s completely inoffensive.
This was one of those cases where a word-for-word translation would have perverted the original meaning of the utterance. So I looked for a statement in English that would be as neutral as the original.
“He said I’m a good person,” I translated.
A language is truly a universe, people.
Clarissa's Blog 
That’s amusing. I’ll keep that in mind if I ever get complimented in Ukrainian.
For me, my favourite is “Okagesama deshita” (More or less, “I am in your shadow”) It’s a way of saying “thank you”, but apparently it sounds too subservient and sniveling for Anglophone sensibilities, so it’s always just translated as “thank you very much” with a little footnote about how it’s a polite and elegant way of saying it.
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I suspect that a lot of (mostly monolingual, no doubt) feminists will say that this means that sexual harssment is still tolerated in some cultures. It does reawaken the enigma of cultural relativism. Here at the university where I work, we have cultural sensitivity and English language training packaged together for foreign graduate students, to avoid just such misunderstandings. I remember so well when taking college French that I was shocked when I first was told that “Mon Dieu!” is not blasphemous in French. I had extreme trouble with the question of why it did not violate the commandment against taking God’s name in vain.
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So saying “Oh my God!” is blasphemous?
I often say it in class, as a joke. Am I hurting the sensibilities of religious students with that?
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For the very very VERY religious students “Oh my God” is indeed blaphemus. But only for the most religious. In general it is part of the venacular. I say “Oh my God” in class–out of habit more than anything–and I have never run in to a problem.
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You could always just say Ay Dios Mio instead, or mix it up with “oh em gee” (argh) and Oh my God and Mon Dieu. I like to say Ay Dios Mio because its what my very Catholic Spanish great grandmother would say all the time. She seemed to be okay with it and didn’t see it as blasphemy. It’s kind of one of the lasting memories I have of her, ay Dios Mio, mija!
When it becomes vernacular it has to be somewhat safe I hope because many teachers including myself fall prey to saying something is “awesome” or something “sucks.” I try not to but I fail.
My students really enjoy when I tell them things about the Irish language. For example, American men might look at a woman and say “wow she’s hot”. An Irishman or a Brit might say “she’s a bit of class” or some such. In the Irish language he might say “ta si an bhadai bhrea” which means “she’s a fine boat.” Like, literally a boat. Because they’re on an island and have been fishermen for millennia. You make do with the world around you.
I love language.
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