I'm in the skeptical camp when it comes to literal translations - I don't think it shows the "mind" of the source language. If anything, I think it has the opposite effect of losing the forest in search of trees, or making phrases unnecessarily more "exotic" than they originally are.
E.g., if I say in Korean that I've become "green onion kimchi", I'm not picturing green onion kimchi in my mind. (I don't even particularly like green onion kimchi.) I'm saying I'm dead tired. When I say "my nose is three feet", I'm not picturing my face being deformed like Pinocchio - I'm saying I'm in no situation to help another.
In cases like that it would be up to me as the fascinated viewer to dig in to those idioms. It would be helped with a translator’s notes of course, but I would expect it to take a little extra time and effort to watch a show like that.
At the end in your example, I feel like I would have a deeper understanding of kimchi as it relates to Korean speakers, how “green onion kimchi” is different, and why that means someone is dead tired.
Then, next time it comes up I would understand it a little better due to slightly different context.
> At the end in your example, I feel like I would have a deeper understanding of kimchi as it relates to Korean speakers, how “green onion kimchi” is different, and why that means someone is dead tired.
Picture this situation in reverse. If you were instead a Korean person, digging in to why Americans associate cats and dogs with heavy rain? Or why English speakers eat butterflies before they do something on stage?
Learning idioms is useful and interesting, but I agree with the other commenter that you shouldn't look to an idiom to gain cultural insight.
Maybe I’m the odd one out, but as a native english speaker I also find english idioms to be interesting and to speak volumes about the person saying them.
“Raining cats and dogs” I had not looked up before, but I don’t hear it much currently so I would likely associate it with someone of a specific older age range, or someone younger who’s been around (or who is emulating) older people. Even that small inference brings some depth to understanding what someone is saying, and the character of the person saying it.
As for “butterflies in my stomach”, that’s even more important as it’s a tactile expression, describing the feeling of nerves as though there were literal butterflies fluttering lightly in one’s stomach. The fact that at some point an english speaker decided to express the internal feeling as though it was something tangible that other people around them were familiar with, that’s (imo) some pretty fascinating cultural context and something that I see repeated throughout english. I also suspect that it happens in many (but importantly not all) other languages/cultures, which is also pretty fascinating.
Many expressions and idioms like that are so goddamn old that they exist in most European languages: "Schmetterlinge im Bauch", "Papillons dans le ventre", "Fjärilar i magen", "Mariposas en el estómago", "Fluturi In Stomac", etc.
E.g., if I say in Korean that I've become "green onion kimchi", I'm not picturing green onion kimchi in my mind. (I don't even particularly like green onion kimchi.) I'm saying I'm dead tired. When I say "my nose is three feet", I'm not picturing my face being deformed like Pinocchio - I'm saying I'm in no situation to help another.