The words in the left column of the puzzle are all "false friends" - that is, they are words that appear to be English words, but which actually have an unrelated meaning in another language. Each of these words can be matched to its English translation in the right column. When the translations are arranged according to their counterparts in the left column, the first letters of the right column read TONGUE WHERE ANO IS YES AND HOST IS GUEST. This is true for CZECH, which is the answer to the puzzle.
The first column below contains the false friend list in the original order, the second column contains the corresponding English translation, and the third column contains at least one of the languages for which this translation holds (related languages often have the same meaning for the same word). It should be pointed out that in addition to the false spelling friends, the puzzle contained some false character friends - four of the words were in non-Latin alphabets, but the letters used in these alphabets were ones that appeared the same as Latin letters.
The title indicated that one should be thinking about translation. The flavortext asks "What kind of a friend is a backstabbing pal?" - a backstabbing pal could be considered to be a false friend (in a different sense of the phrase). Each component of this phrase (BACK, STAB, BING, and PAL) is a false friend of its own; these translations were provided as hints.
| BUD | THIGH | Azerbaijani |
| ΤΟΥ | OF | Greek |
| НОВ | NEW | Bulgarian |
| HALL | GRAY | Estonian |
| NUT | UTILITY | Dutch |
| FARE | ENTIRELY | Albanian |
| LOGS | WINDOW | Latvian |
| SAT | HOUR | Croatian |
| CAR | EXPENSIVE | Catalan |
| CAMERA | ROOM | Italian |
| SLUT | END | Danish |
| BRAS | ARM | French |
| BAKER | NURSE | Dutch |
| SAD | ORCHARD | Polish |
| SEES | INSIDE | Estonian |
| HAT | SIX | Hungarian |
| ANY | YEAR | Catalan |
| ONCE | ELEVEN | Galician |
| KIND | SHEEP | Icelandic |
| САМ | ALONE | Macedonian |
| STOUT | NAUGHTY | Dutch |
| ATE | DOOR | Basque |
| AT | HORSE | Turkish |
| HEN | OLD | Welsh |
| CAN | SING | Irish |
| ASIA | THING | Finnish |
| FADE | INSIPID | German |
| МОРЕ | SEA | Russian |
| ALE | GRAIN | Basque |
| CALZONES | UNDERPANTS | Spanish |
| RAVEN | EVEN | Slovenian |
| FART | SPEED | Swedish |
| HINDI | TURKEY | Turkish |