Happiness, sadness, and anger are translated into Arabic as farah, huzn, and ghudub, respectively, by the translation–back translation method. But are these translations equivalent? To be equivalent, they must have the same referents, specifically, show a high correlation between profiles of endorsement and a similar breadth of endorsement when used to refer to emotions. Here, English-speaking Americans, English-speaking Palestinians, and Arabic-speaking Palestinians (N = 60, 60, and 42, respectively) rated the extent to which each of 12 words referred to the various emotions conveyed by 22 facial expressions. Only one translation (happiness–farah) passed both tests of equivalence. All others differed with culture or language.