I like finding words in other languages that twist the way I think about the English translation. For example The Spanish embarazada translates to pregnant, which, in my situation I would find very emarrassing. One Spanish translation of engaged is compromiso. Hmmm. And the French etiquettes becomes the English labels.
I am sure that some of these have actual historical or linguistic links but I just like the double take and silent smirk they give me.
One of my favorites was a very old Spanish English dictionary that translated the Spanish word macho as i)masculine, ii)a male mule or iii) a very stupid man.
Any one else notice others?

I am reminded of the time when my German teacher informed us that although "heis" means "hot" in most senses, not to use it in reference to yourself. That is, "Ich bin heis" would not mean "I am very warm" but "I am turned-on!"

We thought that was awfully funny!

To wander a little farther afield, in Spanish listo can mean ready or intelligent depending on which verb to be it is used with. Pedro está listo means Pedro is ready. Pedro es listo means Pedro is intelligent.

It's not really related to what you asked, but when you mentioned "embarazada" I remembered a story I had heard.
According to: http://www.baetzler.de/humor/ads_gone_wrong.html,

When Parker Pen marketed a ball-point pen in Mexico, its ads were supposed to have read, " it won't leak in your pocket and embarrass you". Instead, the company thought that the word " embarazar" (to impregnate) meant to embarrass, so the ad read: "It won't leak in your pocket and make you pregnant".


(Plenty more stories in the same vein on that site, too.) Just thought I'd share.

The Spanish embarazada translates to pregnant,

Ooof, good thing you posted this Zed. I have a (very) basic knowledge of Spanish and I do try to speak in Spanish in a Spanish-speaking place. It looks exactly like something I'd say - "Lo siento, soy mucho embarazada" - after butchering a sentence - and confusing my listener even more. I do try though. Do I get an A for effort?

Hmmm. How about this:

In the early 1960s, an apocryphal tale went around about a computer that the CIA had built to translate between English and Russian: to test the machine, the programmers decided to have it translate a phrase into Russian and then translate the result back into English, to see if they'd get the same words they started with. The director of the CIA was invited to do the honors; the programmers all gathered expectantly around the console to watch as the director typed in the test words: "Out of sight, out of mind." The computer silently ground through its calculations. Hours passed. Then, suddenly, magnetic tapes whirred, lights blinked, and a printer clattered out the result: "Invisible insanity."

http://www.snopes.com/language/misxlate/machine.htm