Nice to know that people are reading and getting something out of my (often self-indulgent) ramblings:-)

Re: imperfect translations, I am constantly reminding my students that words and concepts don’t generally translate so nicely from one language to the next. There is always a fair amount of contextual information to consider when trying to translate, and in many cases you simply can’t capture the whole meaning. Getting comfortable with the imperfections of linguistic communication in general is a big step toward becoming a great foreign languge student.