Spanish is my second language. Often when someone asks me the meaning of a sentence or phrase I tell them what it literally means, but a different and more accurate translation would be how we would express the same thought in English. And, of course, the cultural differences are not nearly as vast as between Europeans/Americans and the Japanese.
Do you mean word such as “mañana,” which literally translates as “tomorrow” but in use really means “some unspecified future time, if ever?”
German is my third language, and is linguistically closest to English, although English has its leavening of Latin/Romance influences dating back to Roman and Norman times. As a result, both English and German are very direct languages within their cultural contexts, and what is stated in German tends to translate fairly directly into English.
There are certain nuances though. Such as “Kultur,” which directly translates into English as “culture.” However, the German word has some different overtones to the German ear. It means, more specifically, a German national culture which combines the German language, German history and literature. Also “Gemütlichkeit,” which does not have a really good direct English translation. It can best be described as a happy sense of belonging, cameraderie and community, usually fueled by quantities of good Hofbrau Dunkel beer, or its equivalent. Maybe the best translation is “the happy two beer buzz shared with your college friends.”
When my daughter began studying Spanish in elementary school (like most, she never actually learned how to say anything), I told her to say to her teacher, "¿Como tu frijole?" She asked me what it meant, and I told her with a straight face that it meant, "how you bean," not explaining the homophonic transliteration. Being a dutiful daughter (at the time), she said it to her Spanish teacher the next day, and when she had to explain to the teacher what it meant (was supposed to mean, of course), the teacher laughed, knowing the sense of humor of the daughter's father.