I just want to weigh in and share my sympathies, because I do remember trying to explain to someone why I never liked Neil Gaiman's Anasi Boys (she's white British, I'm from an Afro Caribbean background and grew up in the West Indies) and culturally, she just didn't get it. It doesn't help that Neil Gaiman said that he had help with the manuscript from a Bajan (and still, Gaiman never really got it).

All this to say, I'd translate as best as I could if I were you, and probably just get persuasive when it's time to shop the story around. If then, and only then there are no takers, go conventional.