'buan-chara' in Irish can mean 'a firm friend' or 'friend for life', maybe even 'eternal friend'.'Báúil' also means sympathetic. In Irish it would be more likely that the construction would be noun-based rather than adjectival-based. In English you might say 'he is very simpatico' but in Irish it would be constructed 'he is a simpatico person'. It is very true that trying to translate single words outside of any spoken or written context only leads to frustration, much better to translate the meaning of an entire phrase. Often the nicest translation (and one that comes nearest to the original meaning in the other language) can be far removed from any literal substituting of one word for another, which is really more like decoding and can lead to quite hilarious unintentional results. The Chinese are experiencing this right now as they review all their English-language public sinage in preparation for the Olympics.