Translation can be a difficult task. Words for objects can be relatively simple, but anything more abstract than that can run you into troubles. For example, emotion words and color terms. Where translation also gets sticky is where the only word you have has different connotations from what you wanted. (My favorite example is Ransom's translation into Malacandrian of Weston's speech in Out of the Silent Planet, even though it's only fictional.)
Anna Wierzbicka has proposed a kind of "Natural Semantic Metalanguage" (consisting of basic concepts found the same in all languages) that can be used to more clearly enumerate the difference between different words. She uses it in her books to expound stuff like how Russian duša is different from German Seele and English soul, and the concepts of fate and destiny in a bunch of European languages. It's very like Sapir-Whorf, almost.*
Sometimes it takes a chapter to properly translate a word, but you do get a good feeling for how a word in one language does not necessarily mean the same thing as the closest word in another language.
Also, "translation" in religious contexts means being moved directly to heaven without dying first. According to the Bible, Elijah and Enoch were translated, and possibly Moses, depending on what you read.
* The Wierzbicka book is "Semantics, Culture, and Cognition", IIRC.