How does one create a context for understanding in translation when words can have a multiplicity of meanings in one language and a single meaning in another language?

Ideas require the specificity of definition with words in order to be fully comprehended in all spheres of sensation, but what happens when there is no specificity to be had in the translation of a word into an idea?

What is immediately lost?  Subtlety?  Humor?  Context?  Frames of innate understanding?

As the world crumbles in space and time how it is possible for nations — let alone people of the world — to agree on anything important that involves words and meanings and definitions that pull us beyond the universal human myth of shared beauty and aesthetic?