Yes, it's always tricky. I think an alternative point where translators go for accuracy, everything else be damned, is for cultural artifacts and specialized la

Yes, it's always tricky. I think an alternative point where translators go for accuracy, everything else be damned, is for cultural artifacts and specialized language. For instance when reading programming books, having english words like "core dump" need to either be translated in the exact matching technical word in the target language (which the reader might actually not understand better than "core dump"...english is my second language and I have no idea what it should be officially called in my mother tongue...), or be kept in english. Going for an approximation that conveys the feeling won't be useful to the reader. The same sometimes applies to real word conversation translations where the speaker mixes and matches languages (engrish being part of that). Translating the engrish or the foreign words used in the speech (in particular when the foreign words come from the very language we're trying to translate into) will make it more difficult to understand for the reader, especially if they could have understood the nuances of the original script. I think of this when I see the english "déjà-vu" translated into french: it will often be left untouched with some signage to convey it was in the original script as is, and it would be worse to have it translated for more immersion or fluency.