Policy on translation-like questions?

Question

I realize that the site has a policy of not accepting pure translation questions, but I had a question closed which I would describe as translation-like:
A better way of expressing "burst like a soap bubble"?

I thought the policy was basically (and if it isn't I suggest it be made to something like this): you can't just give a foreign phrase and ask people to translate it, but you can give the gist of the foreign phrase in English and give the foreign phrase in addition for extra info that somebody who happens to speak that language could use to furnish a better answer. As we can see from my question, this did indeed happen (the user Gigili for example speaks good German), and many others were able to give a decent answer despite their not speaking German.

Now I could have rephrased the question as something like, "my friend used the phrase 'burst like a soap bubble'... maybe he got his inspiration from this German phrase" and it may seem more acceptable as it feels "less like a translation question", but come on... the content of the question would be exactly the same. It's a bit like saying "my... friend... has genital warts; how can they be treated?"

What really makes it into an acceptable question IMHO is the paragraph after the German phrase is given, which gives the gist of the German idiom, in English. Should it not be re-opened, with no rewording needed, or are we going to require jumping through grammatical hoops to make a question seem more on-topic whilst actually keeping exactly the same content and being less honest about what your real purpose is for asking the question?

BTW I know this seems similar to this thread but I'm raising it again because I get the impression that if I had purposely worded it deviously to make it sound like my "friend" had used the phrase "and gotten inspiration perhaps from this foreign phrase", the question wouldn't have been closed. Does encouraging this deviousness sound like a sensible policy?

Answer 1

I think your answer has been closed as not constructive because it gets different answers, which seem to give opinions about what the English equivalent would be.
Re-writing the question for a specific case, and making it less generic, could help to re-open it, even though there isn't any certain it gets really re-open.

Providing a rough translation of the German phrase is the first step to do, as you cannot expect that users answering questions on EL&U knows also German, although that is true for some users, in the same way there are users speaking Italian as first language.
Still, that is not the only necessary step, as the question could still be too vague to have an answer. What it is necessary is a context that restricts the number of possible answers; if you are looking for the equivalent of wie eine Seifenblase zerplatzen that can be used in every case, then you are probably asking a too broad question.