4 ideas
Atevi bonds run upward to a leader through man'chi, an instinctive associational loyalty that has no horizontal equivalent of human friendship. Their language has no word for 'like'. A human who reads warmth as affection is misreading a hierarchical allegiance, and that allegiance can shift if the association above it changes.
Bren is the sole human paidhi at the court of Tabini-aiji. He survives a night attack by an assassin in his bedroom and is then sent, for his own protection, to the remote fortress of Malguri. There he is tested and manipulated by Tabini's grandmother Ilisidi while unsure whether his bodyguards Banichi and Jago are protecting him or using him. He learns that their loyalty was always to Tabini, not to him.
The deadliest translation errors come from concepts that seem to map across species or cultures but do not, rather than from words with no equivalent. In the novel's backstory, humans mistook atevi courtesy and association for friendship, and that misreading helped spark the War of the Landing. The translator's discipline is to distrust his own emotional reading of the other side and interpret their behavior through their own structure.
After the war, a treaty confines humans to the island of Mospheira. The paidhi's office controls the pace at which human technology passes to the atevi. Each advance is released only when it can be absorbed without destabilizing atevi society or its balance of power. The translator therefore acts as a gatekeeper of change, trading speed for stability. The whole arrangement depends on both sides trusting that one person's judgment.