Thanks for the advice! Do you think it would be a wise move for me to just stop looking for a literal translation and just accept things for what they are?
It depends on you. Sometimes by doing such literal translations, it might be easier to remember the specific phrase, especially when it still makes some sense, but sounds very funny in your language.
But it's just so that there are some words in one language which don't have equivalents in other languages and must be either explained in a descriptive way, or have some equivalents in form of commonly used phrases.
Try to translate the word "fun" to Polish. You may try to say "zabawa", "przyjemność", but it will be quite far away from the meaning of "fun". But to translate "to have fun" as "dobrze się bawić" (literally "to play well", which seems to sound nonsense in English) is much more accurate.
Going further:
to play - bawić się, grać (the last one in terms of playing a game)
to have fun - dobrze się bawić
bawić się - to play, to have fun (you usually say "dobrze się bawić")
Or the word "feature". It can be translated to Polish as "cecha", but the meaning of the word "cecha" is much narrower. "Feature" in English can mean also a function of a program or a device, and, I think, also other things, which aren't covered by Polish "cecha". As a result it happens that some people in Poland happen to say "ficzer" (pronounciation of "feature" spelled in a Polish way) - when they think about "feature" in the English language sense, not necessarily as "cecha", which is sometimes difficult to translate to Polish.
And there is many such examples. It's usually better to feel the meaning of the word than to know the exact translation. The exact translations are (almost) always inaccurate.
But to be able to do this you need to have some, at least small, knowledge of the language, to be able at least to try to understand anything. So at the beginning of the language learning there is no choice but to learn the word translations.
