Originally Posted By: HearToLearn


I mean it more from the perspective of a danger of writing thinking you are saying one thing and it could mean something VERY different.



I think that would be a very real issue when writing songs for a language other than your own if you are not fluent in the language. Idioms and phrases in other languages can be very tricky.

Perfect example:

Practically everyone remembers the milk commercials where the folks, including a beautiful young woman drinks a glass of milk and has a "milk mustache".....well....The milk industry ran into a huge faux pas with their "GOT MILK?" campaign. It worked really fine in English.... but when they translated it into Spanish, they didn't bother to get a Spanish speaking native to check it. Unfortunately for the milk industry what they thought was asking "Got Milk?" was actually asking... "Are you lactating" and it was highly offensive to the Spanish speaking world, especially the women.

That aside, you also run the risk of having your audience fail to comprehand what might be a key part of your lyric if that idiom is completely foreign to the listener. Kinda like not understanding the punchline to a joke.

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