Phrases whose literal meaning....

[James A. Landau]

My daughter has this response:

The original reason why I wanted to know was because I used a phrase in
Japanese, "daisuki na hon", which I translated as my favorite book. Someone
e-mailed me and said that I was wrong, that what I said translated as
"much-loved book" and the real 'favorite book' translation would be "ichiban
na suki hon" (which literally means 'first-loved book'). I wanted to show
that the literal translation became sort of a colloquial expression...

         The J. Landau family