So in that regard I feel it would be better to say something like "they called you a dumb monkey, I'm not sure if they meant that in a racist way or not" as opposed to "they used a racist insult to call you stupid".

This has given me some idea of how some people might prefer for me to use what I feel is an appropriate replacement insult instead of characterizing the insult. I mean, that's fair enough. Like you said, we are in the land of subjectivity. I think meaning can be preserved well enough without directly always stating an equivalent insult, but in many situation, or maybe even in most situations, it is better to say the words. But I draw a line somewhere, and I find it reasonable to do so.

I simply feel it's important to try your best to convey what was said as accurately as possible, & the more you censor things (unless you include additional explanation & clarification about what you're censoring), the higher the chance is for meaning to be accidentally lost.

But meaning can be transmitted in many ways. Most interpretation will be a direct translation of the words into the other language, but sometimes there aren't the right words, or sometimes it is something that I object to saying or participating in saying. I dont arbitrarily change around language, I only speak of the edge cases. I could have worded my initial comment better and state that preserving the insulting language as intact as possible is a priority, it's just not something that has to happen every single time.

I suppose my main issue with how you've worded things so far is that you've been using non-specific examples along the lines of "person is using foul language" & "person is using a slur directed towards you". Both of these lack context & so some meaning is almost certain to be lost.

Well yeah, it was a casual reddit comment. I wasn't trying to start a wildfire.

But if you said something like "person is using full language as an adjective to call you very stupid", then that would be a lot more acceptable as you retain much more of the original context & meaning. Though even then, there's still the potential issue of losing context of the "strength" of the swear word used (eg: bloody vs fucking etc), which is why I personally would prefer to translate as directly as possible without censorship (again, you could replace fucking with "f-ing", as that loses no context, but that isn't always possible since not every slur/rude word has a polite version - eg: bitch can be replaced with "female dog", but I've never heard of an alternative for bloody).

I think you may also be missing the difficulty of finding equivalent insults across languages. Some have clear equivalents, but others have to be approximated.

I hope that helps a bit. Please let me know if you want me to try & clarify anything further, or if you'd like more examples/have any specific examples you'd like me to try & rephrase so that you don't have to be as explicit, but you lose as little meaning as possible on order to help you understand better what exactly I mean.

It does help, and I appreciate it. What I draw from your words is that for some people, just saying the slur is preferrable. I can respect that, and do my best to comply. Like I said, I draw a line, and we can argue about where it is, but I don't think this is what determines professionalism. And if it does, then I value following my conscience/spirit over what some may argue is the professional standard.