Please help me paraphrase

Wow, fansy - you sure picked "a tough nut to crack"! Why? Mainly because it is a matter of English as written a few hundred years ago. Sir Henry Wooten (1568-1639) was a contemporary of William Shakespeare and John Donne.

For the sake of convenience, I'm posting below the quotation to which you are referring [source: PoemHunter.com]:

"Whilst on a visit to Augsburg in 1604 he wrote a definition of an Ambassador which is now one of his most famous phrases;
'An Ambassador is an honest man, sent to lie abroad for the good of his country.'"

A couple of comments:
"conceit" = concept, idea, a kind of mental construction
"fair" = appealing, well said, attractive
"thought" = thought [to be], considered to be
(The common meanings of "conceit" and "fair" in modern English are different from what they were in Wooton's day, or "Shakespearean English", as it is often called.)

I think the material in boldface type is expressing these ideas:
1. In the quotation, the word "lie" in English is a pun and conveys a double meaning not contained in the Latin verb.
2. The quotation is witty when written in English but does not translate into Latin in such a witty fashion.

Roughly, in a very rough effort to convey the idea, I might have said: "Because the wittiness of Wooton's quotation depends on the verb "lie" having a double meaning in English, translation into Latin loses in translation."

N.B. [Nota bene, of course - one of my favorite Latin abbreviations]: It is true that the verb "lie" can be used in a sexual sense. However, I do not believe that is the intention in Wooten's quotation. Why? Because the word "lie" is written in counterbalance with the word "honest", one word being in direct contrast with the other. If the sexuality usage is presesnt, it is only an echo, a kind of indirect allusion.

thanks
thank you very much for your very clear explanation. I am helping my friend to solve this "translation problem." I think other readers will also benefit from your reply.

From a Latin to English translator:

"deputy is man good to proceed to send to mentiendum Reipublicae case at law"

c.i., you are too funny!

I'm sure it will be obvious to fansy that the sentence you posted is bizarre and incorrect to the extreme and bears only the remotest connection with the English language original.

The classic example of the inadequacy of literal translations done by computers or translation machines, rather than by human beings, is this story (perhaps an "urban legend"):

It is said that back in the 1950s, this sentence was fed into a translation machine of some kind: "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." (a quotation from the Bible)

The result of translating from English into Russian, and then from Russian back into English, was this weird but very funny result:

"The vodka is good, but the meat is rotten."

Aa, My knowledge of Latin is zero, so I had to plug it into a translator on the net. Lesson learned. Thank you. That was funny!

I'm here again asking for help
Working the ground, sniffing out opportunities to clinch deals, prodding reluctant parties into talks: this "on-the-ground diplomacy" on all fronts, as Mr Kouchner described it this week, carries risks.

Please help me paraphrase the above guotation, esp. the bolded parts.
Thanks

fancy, The sentence doesn't make any sense.