> The initial draft was terrible in conveying tone, irony, or any kind of cultural allusion.

My mother reads books mostly in Russian, including books by English-speaking authors translated into Russian.

Some of the translations are laughably bad; one recent example had to translate "hot MILF", and just translated "hot" verbatim - as in the adjective indicating temperature - and just transliterated the word "MILF", as the translator (or machine?) apparently just had no idea what it was, and didn't know the equivalent term in Russian.

As a mirror, I have a hard time reading things in Russian - I left when I was ten years old, so I'm very out of practice, and most of the cultural allusions go straight over my head as well. A good translation needs to make those things clear, either via a good translation, or by footnotes that explain things to the reader.

And this doesn't just apply to linguistic translation - the past is a foreign country, too. Reading old texts - any old texts - requires context.

As a Russian, горячая милфа is exactly how I’d translate it. I think a lot of slang got borrowed like this in 2000-s.

A lot of commercial translations of foreign books are out of date. The ones sold in stores use translations that are > 100 years old because then they are public domain and they don't have to pay any royalties to anyone.

I can highly recommend anyone who is looking to read a foreign book research the translation before they buy it. Some awesome modern translations don't bubble up in the searches because their sales are much lower than the cheaper versions.

> and just translated "hot" verbatim - as in the adjective indicating temperature

Well, "горячий" does have figurative meaning "passionate" (and by transfer, "sexy") in Russian just as it has in English. Heck, English is even worse in this regard: "heated argument", seriously? Not only an argument doesn't have a temperature, you can't change it either (since it does not exist)! Yet the phrase exists just fine, and it translates as "hot argument" to Russian, no problem.

No comments on "MILF" though. But I wouldn't be surprised if it actually entered the (youth/Internet) slang as-is: many other English words did as well.

Reminds me of my Czech friend explaining some of the subtle humour in 'Kolya' which I would never have got just from the English subtitles.