You did find a translation that at least comes close to what some people might mean by calling someone a “leader of the free world”, without violating any of the cultural rules associated with the language you’re using. No shame there. At all.
Just for the record, I’m not German, but Austrian - that’s a difference we care about, and if you ever find yourself incapable of communicating with the Germans, we’ll be happy to translate. As long as you don’t call us Germans ;-).
Any examples?
The only Slavic language that I know anything of is Croatian/Serbian, and there I find that the cultural assumptions are amazingly similar to Austria; in fact I’d be willing to defend the statement that the cultural differences between Zagreb and Vienna are less than those between Vienna and Berlin, although the latter two speak sort of the same language (in the same sense that Scotland and Texas speak the same language).
