Just come up with your own jokes. Puns don't translate well.
Usually yes. But understanding the original pun will often be helpful in trying to come up with your own jokes that fit in there.
For example, if I didn't knew that “Comed-Tea” is a pun on “Comedy”, I wouldn't be able to come up with a suitable German name for the drink. Once I noticed that, I was able to think of a analogous-yet-different joke that works in German (which is a pun on the German word for “weird”, by the way, since that fits nicely.)
(OTOH, I probably don't have to worry about context when translating these one word-omakes…)
We're currently translating chapter 11 into German. It's going along fine, but
is still puzzling us. No dictionary entries, no HPMoR-unrelated search hits, nothing…
Is this some kind of dadaist joke by Eliezer? Or are we missing something?