I'm going to cheat a little bit this week cause I want to talk about the French concept of faux amis. Technically, we do have an English equivalent for this. It's called "false friends," which is a literal translation from the French. However, I still think the phrase qualifies for my blog since I'd never even heard of "false friends" in English until I looked it up just now. Faux amis, on the other hand, is a very commonly used term among the French.
Basically, "false friends" are two words from different languages that sound similar--and might even have a common origin--but in fact have different meanings.
In my work as a translation editor, I've come across some lovely mistranslations involving faux amis. For subtitles in a video about how to draw Luffy from One Piece, the previous translator had written "Luffy a un gros tête" as "Luffy has a gross head." Poor Luffy! I doubt that he bathes very often, but still, he's not gross!
