Euphemism, a figure of speech that gives a pleasant name to harsh or forbidding reality, requires interpretation in its own language before it can be translated into another. Euphemisms are in fact idioms, peculiar to a people and to a particular time and place. They embody metaphors, allusions, hyperboles, abbreviations, slang and other linguistic features that usually defy literal translation. It is a happy coincidence when some equivalent of an English euphemism is found in Chinese, or the reverse. More often the translator has to resort to paraphrasing, annotation and other means to convey the intent of the original. Specimens from current American speech are adduced and, where possible, associated with Chinese expressions of a similar nature.